Category Archives: getting published

Not Quite Adults is moving inexorably toward publication date. Every day brings another decision about the cover, or a list of magazines to reach out to, or another lovely blurb.

Yesterday brought two. This one in particular warmed my heart:

“There are three huge strengths that set this book apart from anything else available on the transition to adulthood. First, it is written in a lively and jargon-free style by two rare social scientists who are familiar with the English language. Second, its scope is stunning, including challenges to becoming an adult created by dramatic changes in education, relations between young adults and parents, marriage and its precursors, civic life, and the world of work. Third, the tone is relentlessly upbeat about the advantages these changes are opening up for young people. This book proves that it is possible to write an interesting book about a big social problem that reflects research knowledge while nonetheless being accessible to the American public.” Ron Haskins –co-director of the Brookings Institute’s Center on Children and Families

Writers toil away with rarely any applause, so a small clap like the above, and we’re in love. Yes my friends, flattery gets you everywhere. Blurbs for me are like the praise of a coach or trainer– it’s not the only reason you put yourself through the grief, but it does momentarily make it all worth it.

And in this climate of publishing, we need all the props we can get. As Steinbeck, who way back in 1962 said of the publishing game: “The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.” He should see it now. It’s a tad brutal.

I like to pride myself on a grounded pragmatism that safeguards me from becoming unhinged, but publishing a book amid the meltdown of the printed word unfortunately gives “unhinged” a little more stage time. I kept telling myself that being orphaned by three editors as each is marched off into the editorial sunset is a product of the recession, not the quality of our writing. I simply skipped reading the articles about books that went from concept to print in a year, telling myself that three years is not that much longer. I opted for diversionary tactics to keep my spirits up as we were pigeon-holed into the “parenting” spot on the bookshelf and given a cover with an empty nest on it. (Or as “The World in a Phrase” so aptly put it: “In the beginning was the Word, at the end, just the cliche.” Luckily we dodged that bullet in the end).  I bolstered my sagging spirits when we were relegated to “original paperback” instead of hardcover by reminding myself that you sell more copies in paper than hardcover and it is not the equivalent of going straight to video, really truly.  But at some point, in the immortal words of our poet laureate Bob Dylan, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

So I consigned our book to the mental remainder bin, and prepared for my role as the kid who gets the orange ribbon for team spirit.

But then, a funny thing happened. We started to get great pre-reviews by Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus. Our newly assigned publicist got excited about the book after reading it. And the blurbs started rolling in, saying nice things like blurbers are wont to do, but more important for me–they got the message we were trying to convey. They understood it! This was hopeful. The big-picture story we’re telling in the book was coming through–this book is more than parenting advice or yet another book on GenX or Y.  It has a larger, and often surprising message, and that message was getting through. And suddenly, people in-house began to sit up and take notice (at least a modicum of notice, which at this starved phase is all I need). Suddenly there’s talk of a hardcover first release again, and some interest from publications for op-eds and blogs and serialization.

So thank you blurbers, all of you. I needed it.

I’ll leave the post on this high note, from another reader:

“Not Quite Adults is perhaps the most important contribution to date about the strange new life of America’s twentysomethings.  Settersten and Ray are able to combine a deep grasp of the research with common sense advice for “not quite adults” and their parents. The slower path to adulthood is here to stay; thanks to the authors, we are now much wiser about what that means for all of us.” –Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys and contributing editor City Journal

Heart you.

…I bought an iPad. Here it sits beside me, in all its black Bond-like sleekness, beckoning me with its allure while guilting me that I’ve contributed to the downfall of civilization somehow. I haven’t yet downloaded a book, although I will of course. It is, as Steve Jobs knows all too well, inevitable.

It struck me as I was downloading a bunch of apps that we think nothing of paying $5 for a Facebook iPad app but squall over paying a little more than that for a book of 300 pages of hard-won prose. But that’s another story…. and I’m trying not to be one of those curmudgeons.

My initial explorations have left me a little giddy– it is a very cool gadget. And what do I love the most? The iPad is essentially a a “big type” iPhone–you know, those books with the ginormous typeface you see right next to books on tape, for  “old” people. But shhh, don’t tell my Boomer brethren that.

The guilt still nags, though. I think I’m feeling guilty because I have a front-row seat to the meltdown of the publishing world.  As my faithful readers know, I signed a book deal nigh three years ago (or was it four?) with Random House for “Not Quite Adults” (once upon a time called Slouching Toward Adulthood). One, then two, and then three editors were felled by the axe of layoffs. Our acquiring editor, Toni Burbank, was forced into retirement. Our replacement, Philip, met his doom the next year right before Thanksgiving–”realignment” they called it. And editor number three was with us for such a short time that all I have is a welcome email from her. The irony. Through it all, Philip’s editorial assistant, lovely Angela, has persevered–a twenty-something whose lower wages sadly protect her from the axe.

We listened to first one, then two, and finally three editors weigh in with their opinions of the book, most of them too preoccupied with their own short demise to do no more than go through the motions. Being novices at this game (not to mention people pleasers), we listened. And rewrote. And listened. And rewrote. Sometimes, the edits we made restored the deletions we’d cut on the advice of the last editor.

A year passed since we’d turned in the final draft. My mother quit chatting the book up to her friends, quietly certain that the book was dead and I was just too embarrassed to admit it. My husband’s brother, on hearing me mention the book over dinner a few weeks ago, blurted out,  “that book hasn’t been published YET? I thought that had come and gone.” (He was so busted with that comment–you’d think he would have at least attempted to buy the book?) I suspect many of my friends are tiptoeing around the issue as well, afraid that the book came and went so fast that they missed it in the stores.

But it hadn’t. It was still wending its way through the final copyedits, the first galleys, the cover decisions, the blurb solicitations, the author bios and picture, the flap copy, the proofreading, and finally, a publicist–the first person, I have to say, who truly “gets” the book. Thank gawd. Things were rolling.

But then comes the news of Barnes and Nobel. Suffice it to say, when you put yourself up for sale, you know it’s desperate. The 28% stock-price decline in the last year, coupled with a $62 million revenue loss in the 2d quarter doesn’t help, not to mention an ugly ego/legal battle between a supermarket magnate and a man who thinks of bookstores as supermarkets.

And why should I care? I’ve never been enamored of these big-box booksellers who drive mom and pop out of business. They got their comeuppance if you ask me. Yep, I was feeling no love-loss there– until last week, when it trickled down to little ole me. You see, B&N buys 50% of Random House’s first press runs. Half. Now that’s some kind of leverage. (Don’t get me going on how this leverage influences what we read.)  And so, when their reported earnings slump for the quarter, and when legal fees for the ego fight are smothering the last-gasp of air the bookstore has in it, it starts to affect the orders for books. So our little publishing venture faces yet another hurdle.

In the meantime, though, like little David slaying Goliath (or maybe it’s more like Pangloss), we’re generating great advance praise. The Kirkus Review, who often flays (filets?) books, gave it a thumb’s up, calling it “provocative.”  To be exact: “A provocative look at how a changing reality is transforming the transition to adulthood for a generation of Americans, and the implications of this transformation in today’s competitive world.”  [toot-toot]

Of course, it started out like this:

With the assistance of Ray, the former communications director for the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, Settersten … draws on an eight-year study, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, into the social and financial lives of young Americans …

Assistance?????  Sigh. That, too, is fodder for another blog. Not to toot my own horn here, but I wrote the effin book.  And it’s not Rick’s study. And…  I could go on. Alas, I have to prepare for this treatment from here on in. Rick’s name is first because he has the PhD, end of story–another cold reality of the publishing world: those who can write and produce a book under a deadline are relegated to journeyman status, while those with the credentials get all the glory. Bitter, moi?

But I’m thrilled with the nod from Kirkus. They are one of two highly influential early reviewers who influence bigger buyers. And they’re not an easy audience. As Laura Zigman, a former publicist at Knopf, put it:

“When I was a book publicist, the worst part of my job was having to read a Kirkus review over the phone to an author. 2 cigs before, 2 after.”

So maybe, just maybe we’ll make it out into that cold, cruel world of publishing and have a shelf life a little longer than a mayflie.  An assistant can dream.

Punchy I believe is where I left off. We were indeed that. Rick’s achilles tendon was bloody. My mind was mush. And we needed to turn it “on” one more time, for the big guns.

I’m not a salesperson. Never was. I tried it–twice. Once selling car stereos, and once selling the new-fangled video advertising (circa 1981). The car stereos was a hoot, albeit dreadful. My counterpart in sales danced circles around me. I just could not bring myself to sell an overpriced woofer to a guy and his pregnant girlfriend who were barely scraping by. Sales was not for me.The video advertising ended tragically.

But here I was, late in the day in the capital of high-pitched sales, New York City, and boy I was fried. I’d also felt a little one-upped all day by my coauthor, who was on a roll in the schmoozing dept. I tend to feel a little persecuted when no one notices my brilliance sight unseen. Yes, it’s a problem. I felt like sulking a couple times, but then my good old boxing coach, Chupi, popped into my head: “Gringa, what are you doing letting him beat you? Throw a punch, just don’t stand there!!!!!” (Chupi was a very animated Puerto Rican– in my corner to the end).

So I rallied. We walked into RH, got our passes from the security guard, and packed into yet another elevator. Ding. We were on the vaulted floors of the editorial offices of the big guys.

It was pretty underwhelming to be honest. Cubicles. (!) Say it ain’t so Joe. Dilbert, really?

We were ushered into a glass-encased room that always reminds me of those scary psychological experiments where white lab-coated people with clipboards nod and check off lists as the people behind the glass talk.

Anyway, there we were, encased. It was actually a small group for a change– just two editors, an editorial assistant, and us. Toni Burbank. She’d been at Random House for most of her career, which was going on 30 years I believe. Unheard of in this pell-mell “right-sizing” world of buyouts and mergers that publishing was enduring. We’d heard so much about her from Joelle, I was already nearly in awe.

All I could think at time, as I looked around at the young editorial assistants, was What if? What if I’d known enough to leave Iowa and move directly to NYC, with nothing but a willingness to work hard and learn the ropes? Would I have been sitting in Toni’s seat? Or would I have been cast aside because I hadn’t even known that you have to go to Bryn Mawr or Brown to even get a foot in the door (at least today)?

That’s one lesson I learned in writing this book. Today is a high-stakes world for young people. No one can just walk into a publisher today and hope to start from the bottom and work up–without credentials stacked high already. The game begins early, with elite parents understanding very clearly how the game is played, while another group of parents still believes in the school of hard knocks and paying dues. Yet dues are paid today in internships–internships that require a benefactor to support you while you intern yourself (or perhaps “inter” yourself). The rest of us, without those deep pockets, end up at Starbucks.

But I digress…  And I’m tiring. I promise I’ll get to the part where it all melts down. But not today.