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Geoff Shandler

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Posted Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2001, at 9:00 PM ET

I've been out of town for much of the past few weeks, working with writers on the final rounds of their books, so there's an Everest of paperwork to take care of. I sign to pay authors their money; I approve flap copy for a book; I examine last week's sales; I speak with the production department about what kind of paper to order; I write a fellowship recommendation letter for an old author of mine. Today I also have to do my least favorite task: beg other writers for blurbs.

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Blurbs are endorsement quotes, and about one out of 10 people you target will actually do it by deadline. It's a lot to ask someone to drop what she's doing, read a manuscript (sometimes an early, rough version), and publicly proclaim support for it. In today's case the author wants a blurb from a famous movie star, so I'm trying, knowing full well the odds of her getting the manuscript, let alone reading it, are close to nil. Sometimes you get quotes, but they're unusable. I once got a blurb proclaiming a book "a major advance in his craft as a novelist." It should've been—it was his first novel. A major historian concluded that the book I had sent him was "reminiscent of many of the finest aspects of my own scholarship." Once I was thrilled to get that Holy Grail of blurb punctuation (unlike the movie business, which has no qualms about adding exclamation points to sentences from reviews, our concern for textual authenticity leaves us with just the original periods) when someone—a former presidential candidate, no less—responded glowingly, "This is the best novel I have read in years!" The book in question was a Russian politician's autobiography.

I decide to wait a bit on the movie star's address and turn to another, slightly (but only slightly) less painful duty: negotiating a contract.

A few years ago, when novelist John le Carré left Knopf, his longtime publisher, for Scribner's, the papers reported he had done so in order to get more dough. I didn't want to believe it. During the Cold War, Westerners who spied for the East did so for financial gain; Easterners who spied for the West did it for ideological (that is, anti-Communist) reasons. And le Carré had gone from Random House's East Side building to Scribner's offices just into Manhattan's western sector. Surely this was evidence that the split was ideological! And in fact, though few know it, le Carré had been angry at Random House (which owns Knopf) over its publication of East German spymaster Markus Wolf's autobiography. As Random announced at every opportunity, Wolf was widely assumed to be the model for Karla, le Carré's fictional Communist spymaster. "Widely assumed" may be understating it; the only person who didn't believe this was John le Carré himself. Le Carré wrote the company a blistering letter threatening to leave if the correlation continued. It did continue—albeit more discreetly—and before long le Carré had defected.

But I was wrong. In Midtown and in Moscow, the Cold War was over; the Spy Had Come in for His Check. An editor can be creative and charming and that counts for something, yet in the end almost every contract negotiation comes down to the same, one-variable equation. So I negotiate not with the OED or Granta beside me, but spreadsheets. And trust me: The agent on the other end of the line has her calculator switched on, too.

Not that I don't want authors to make a living. And agents aren't the problem. We're the ones who are agreeing to these crazy deals; why shouldn't they go for it if we're willing? And it seems like someone is always willing. A few weeks ago, my colleague Deborah Baker and I met with an up-and-coming young writer. Her proposal was funny and quirky. But for the life of us, we couldn't figure out what she ultimately wanted to do with the book. I asked her why the proposed chapters were in the order that they were. She replied that she had no idea. Deborah suggested several really smart ways to organize them, but the author didn't seem particularly interested. Someone had already made an offer on the proposal as it was. She didn't need to change anything.

A few days later a TV personality stopped by to talk about his book. He had virtually no idea what to write about, but had been advised that at this stage in his career a book would be a good idea. I was happy to talk with him about what he might pursue, but by the next day he had agreed to a deal with someone else. He remained hopeful literary inspiration would soon strike.