Welcome to our new series, “Hey, How’d You Do That?” walking you through how those in the media industry navigated key professional junctures, achieved career-making coups, tackled spur-of-the-moment scenarios and made the decisions that furthered their work. In this first installment, we asked novelist Lynn Harris: How did you self-publish a book, then use it to land a deal with a major publisher for your second title?
Miss Media, my first novel, was set in 1999 during the dot-com gold rush and all the concomitant millennial angst. In the book, our heroine (Lola Somerville) pursued her hunch that women’s media giant Ovum, Inc. (and Ovum.com, complete with 24-hour juice bar, free sushi, and co-ed Ally McBathrooms) was controlled by forces far more powerful than even incompetence. Here’s the thing: I (my devoted agent) tried to sell it in 2002, when the gold rush was over. So publishers didn’t want it — though they did say lots of nice things — because, they said, it felt “dated.” The dot-com frenzy was over, but not over enough to be nostalgic or “retro” as subject matter. So ironically, it was “dated” because it was too early. (A handful of books set at the same time have just come out.)
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Sometimes the noble thing to do is to put a well-done, but done, project in a drawer and never look back. But sometimes the noble thing to do is to not give up, even if that involves moving to Plan B. Or Plan R. I really, REALLY believed in the book, and not just because, you know, I wrote it. I truly did think the book had commercial potential beyond any ax-grinding of my own; I’d worked hard to make sure of that in the writing process.
And so I turned to Plan R, which was self-publishing. I was impressed with iUniverse’s presentation on their Web site. It was very thorough and professional and respectable, not hokey or, like, “Writers-to-be! Publish poetry about your cat here and receive a free box of stationery with a typewriter graphic!” Totally the opposite. So I went with them, and — despite the fact that it was Plan R — felt very good about the experience in and of itself.
The book did fine. Of course, I had to do all and any PR myself. This was a LOT of work. They say that any author winds up doing most of her own PR, but this was really ALL my own; writing the press release, mailing review copies. And I did manage to get some good [press]. But I did not have one of those stories you hear about authors driving cross-country selling books out of their hatchback and finally hitting the big-time. I do not have a hatchback: I hit the medium-time. I also ran into snobbery about self-publishing, which made me feel pretty bad… but also redoubled my resolve to make the next [book publishing experience] different.
After Miss Media, I wanted to get a fresh start with a new agent. I basically asked all my friends, my friends with good book deals, if they’d mind referring me to theirs. This also gave me incentive to focus on finishing a partial manuscript for the book, because agents don’t necessarily take you on as, like, a person — they are more likely to take you on for a particular project.
So I was thisclose to working with Agent A when Agent B called out of the blue after seeing a piece I’d written [for] Nerve and asked if I was looking for representation. I met with her and felt we clicked. Plus, it was sort of the literary version of The Rules: I was impressed that she sought me out — obviously, she liked my writing, which is an important start — and, in the bigger picture, that she was the kind of agent who was aggressive and charge-taking and on the lookout. (Of course, she was also probably looking to expand her roster, but who isn’t? Point is, I liked the way she did it.) And, fortunately, I did have a partial manuscript to show her; double fortunately, she liked it. So we agreed to work together.
Then I set about finishing — as she suggested — half of my novel manuscript and outlining, chapter by chapter, the rest of it. When she sent it out to publishers, I did not realize my dream of inciting a bidding war. But Berkely/Penguin came through with an okay deal and a lot of enthusiasm, so there it was.
Lynn Harris is an author, essayist, commentator, and award-winning journalist. Her brand-new book is the satirical novel Death By Chick Lit, whose prequel, Miss Media, was hailed by New York magazine as a “sharp, smart satire.” She is also co-creator, with Chris Kalb, of award-winning Web site BreakupGirl.net.
Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing features editor. She can be reached at: rebecca AT mediabistro DOT com
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