Michael Murphy, a former publisher of William Morrow books, is a veteran literary agent who is actively seeking writers. In our in-depth interview with him, Murphy discusses why he has to sometimes jump in and do the publishers job, why it sometimes better to go with a small publisher over a major house, why he’s staying away from vampire books and his love for blowing up mailboxes with M-80’s.
Michael, what’s your official title at your company and why do you think you’re one of the best agents in the biz?
I change my official title based on whim and need. Generally, I am Chief Susurrator (translation = director of emitting small noises). But, when I want to seem ‘professional’ in order to lure in a certain kind of writer, I fall back on founder, owner, or director. I am not the best agent in the universe. But, I do think I’m the best agent in New Orleans. Because there is no real training or vetting to become an agent, we all bring different skill sets. I assume ex-lawyers (or current lawyers) like Jeff Klienman or Paul Levine bring a sharper pen to the vetting of a contract. I know uber-agents like Esther Newberg or Binky Urban raise the bar on how a proposal will be received by publishers just based upon the fact that it’s coming from an uber-agent.
With my years on the publishing side and a lot of experience in marketing & sales, I do bring some creativity to the process not as available from all agents. In the process of getting books to the marketplace, I have at times been the primary editor, designed covers, written jacket copy and or the press release, set up my authors at book festivals, conferences, or interviews on-line or on-air. In one case I designed, printed, and paid for a preview sampler for a book where the publisher didn’t want to use their marketing budget in that way. In another case, I actually jumped in and started selling bookstores (I was trying to shame the publisher for what I considered a tepid job). I was six for six in getting orders in bookstores from Los Angeles to Milwaukee, to Miami where the publisher had failed. Except for this last case, I don’t fault the publishers nor do I mind jumping in on what might be considered “not my job.” The staff at most houses has been cut to the bone. People left in marketing, publicity, & sales are often now asked to perform the jobs of 3 or 4 people. If I can help the cause, I’m happy to. I actually love all aspects of publishing. I try (but don’t always succeed) to meld my passions to the publisher’s efforts so I’m not perceived as a nuisance.
Things have changed so rapidly for this business and continue to change. What are you doing to prepare your writers?
I have tried to expand my net from the traditional New York trade houses to include far more small and independent presses. With the pinch being felt by book publishers, advances from The Big Guys have been coming down (unless you’re a Literary Master like Sarah Palin or Keith Richards). So, the difference on an advance from The Big Guys and small houses is not as great as a few years ago. The fact is, a writer can get a book published as well or better by a tiny house located time zones from New York. Gin Phillips (not my author) couldn’t ask for a better job than Rhonda Hughes and her 2-person publisher in Portland, Oregon, Hawthorne Books, did on THE WELL AND THE MINE.
Quite frankly, the other thing I’ve been doing to brace myself has been to try to develop side revenue streams. I love being an agent – more than anything I’ve ever done in the book business, which includes being the Publisher for William Morrow Books. But, it’s damn hard to make livable wages as a certain kind of agent right now. Since moving to New Orleans at the end of last year, I have squeezed in discussions with area universities and writing centers to teach a course on book publishing as I used to do with the NYU Publishing Program. With the Saints Super Bowl victory, its aftermath blending right into Mardi Gras, this hasn’t been easy. I never want to charge writers for one on one book doctoring. That somehow strikes me as sleazy. There are absolute scam artists out there taking the money from aspiring writers to learn their SYSTEM or METHOD to be published successfully in 8 weeks or whatever. Shameful. I have, however, spoken to a few downsized highly placed publishing executives about doing a road show to places like Madison, WI or Lawrence, KS to present to writing groups the publishing landscape (at least as we see it).
Michael, what do you think about all these technological changes happening in the publishing world?
I think anything that makes the connection between a writer and their core readers faster, easier, or sexier is ultimately a wonderful thing. In the short term (and this is just my silly theory), I think the evolution away from a wide sea of book people who cared passionately about good writing and reading (independent booksellers, publishers’ sales reps, and a wealth of book reviewers) to an isolated individual holding a device, their book interests being driven by anything that makes it through the clutter of media and the internet, is a terrible thing. There are vastly fewer book reviewers to advocate books to readers than just a few years ago. The great Susan Larson, an institution in the New Orleans book community, just took her buy out option from The Times-Picayune. There are vastly fewer sales reps to highlight books to booksellers. I just heard Simon & Schuster is down to but seven reps covering the entire country. These changes feed into books that have to sell themselves without this former wide sea of book people. It leads to books driven by profile over content. When I walk into a superstore and see the front tables dominated by books by former sit com stars or current reality TV show performers, my old grizzled heart just seizes up a bit. All those books and nothing I want to read.
I do hope that people smarter than me will learn how to use the promise of the new social media to take a writer without obvious “hooks” (other than the fact that they write beautifully) to find the tens or hundreds of thousands of readers who’d love their work rather than the 2-3,000 that now happen upon the 1 or 2 copies on the shelves of a select number of bookstores.
What would you say editors are hot for?
Probably to my financial detriment, I don’t devote a lot of focus toward what’s hot now. I tend to physically recoil from hot categories. I hope never again to see another memoir about the life lessons learned from the family dog. I love Mark Doty. I think he’s the greatest living American poet. I stuck some of his writing from FIREBIRD into my wedding vows. But I refuse to read his DOG YEARS. In January, I went into the YA section to get some books from my daughter’s school reading list. I nearly passed out from the vapors when I saw that practically EVERY book in the entire section looked like a vampire novel to take advantage of the Twilight craze. Even Jane Austen had been re-packaged to look like a vampire novel. I hate this aspect of publishing (or I guess our culture at large). I choose not to feed this beast. Of course, that probably leads to my needing side revenue streams.
As far as what I’m looking for, I am a sucker for writers like Susan Orlean and Tony Horwitz where their work is extremely personal and infused with the feel of memoir, but the subject matter is outwardly focused so that the reader learns a whole lot of “stuff,” not just the impressions or reflections of the writer. Amy Baker, the marketing manager for Harper Perennial, had a great term for this kind of work that I can’t now recall (I need to call her). In essence it was Intensely Personal Journalism, but less clumsy than that wording.
I’m also willing (and desirous) to have my head turned by something in which I never expected to be involved. Originally, I set out not to handle fiction. But, when I read a short story by Barb Johnson, I felt “But I have to be involved with THIS!” On March 3rd, Barb just won 2nd place as Barnes & Nobles Discovery title of 2009. This was for MORE OF THIS WORLD OR MAYBE ANOTHER, a short story collection by a first time 52 year old writer. I am just now sending out a proposal for a manuscript I don’t even know how to define. I call Anne Ricketts’ BLUE SKIES AHEAD an apercu. It’s a series of nonfiction prose-poem sketches, quick impressions that dip in and out of the characters in her life and in and out of chronological order. Collectively the sort-of-memoir deals with the Big Issues of love, lust, betrayal, fitting in, and sexual orientation but in a style so light in execution that it feels no more weighty than riding around with the top down. I have alternately called Anne’s work “Colette with most the words taken out” or “LOVE LOST & WHAT I WORE for lesbians” or “Kind of like Annie Ernaux, except it’s nothing like Annie Ernaux.” I certainly wasn’t looking for anything like BLUE SKIES AHEAD and I sense it could be really hard to sell in 2010. But, Anne’s writing resisted my every attempt to dismiss it. I even made my wife and two of my writers read it to assure me it wasn’t bad poetry or trite musings but something sneaky that builds up to be subtle and beautiful. Their opinions secured my opinion. I hope Anne Ricketts’ weird little book gains the life it deserves.
What’s the best way for writers to approach you, Michael?
I appreciate cogency (at least in others). A tight email telling me what the book is, why anyone would drop $24 for it, and who you are should accompany 2 or 3 chapters and we’re there. My #1 pet peeve is that so many writers don’t do any homework. Maybe nearing 50% of my queries are for categories I do not represent (Science Fiction, Romance, Self-Help). I know I just replied that I am looking to have my head turned, but I will never represent Science Fiction, Romance, or Self-Help. I don’t read it. I don’t understand why books in those categories work or fail. I have no relationships with editors in those categories. If I wanted to be a Sous Chef, I wouldn’t apply to Jiffy Lube. I really don’t get it.
And finally, what is something about you that very few people know?
Y’know, in these days of FaceBook and just regular old email, confessional chatter is just so easy (and maybe a little addictive). I don’t think there’s anything I have ever done or thought that I have not fed onto somebody’s computer screen. I have a writer-client in Los Angeles whom I have never met, where we footnote our every correspondence with a series of questions. We are up into the thousands. I know her favorite singer is Van Morrison, her favorite cereal Raisin Bran, if given the chance, she would have slept with Helen of Troy, and way way more…and she knows way too much about me.
I guess the average friend or colleague doesn’t know that in high school I loved to blow up mailboxes with M-80’s. My personal record was 28 in one night. Testosterone in a 17-year-old boy is a scary thing.