ANDY ROSS's Blog
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Jan.31.2010
I woke up this morning to the astonishing news that Amazon.com has stopped selling all titles from Macmillan , the sixth largest publisher in America. I learned about this first on Frances Dinkenspiel's blog, Ghost Word. Frances is a Macmillan author.
According to an article in The New York...
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Jan.28.2010
The Schnookie DealWhat I like most about being a literary agent is the serendipitous way in which my projects seem to find me. Take, for instance, The Schnookie Deal by Ted Sherman and Josh Margolin. North American rights were acquired last December by Saint Martin's Press.
On July 23 of last...
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Jan.20.2010
The Slush Pile
Let us consider the slush pile.
David Patterson, a senior editor at Henry Holt, whose taste in books I admire greatly, sent me an article from The Wall Street Journal online entitled: "The Death of the Slushpile."
Way back when, the slush pile was an uncomplimentary term...
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Jan.11.2010
I used to do a lot of public speaking, and in some pretty big venues, too. I also seemed to be on a lot of media people's rolodexes (yes, that is what they had back then). When they needed a quote about the virtue of local business or "bricks and mortar" stores, they could always get a...
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Jan.02.2010
Nobody is going to want to hear this, but we might as well face up. One of these days, not too far off, bookstores will be a thing of the past. Books are going digital just like music has gone digital. Right now e-book purchases constitute less than 2% of all book sales. But while sales of...
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6 comments
Dec.19.2009
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Bill Clinton's book signing at Cody's on June 29, 2004 was the biggest event that we ever had, both in attendance and in the number of books sold.
Cody's had been doing events for a long time. I bought the store in 1977. Even then, events were a fixture at Cody's. During the time I owned the...
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Dec.10.2009
Sometimes I love this job and feel like I'm really doing something great for the world. Today I'm going to interview Peter Rudiak-Gould, author of of Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island published in November by Union Square Press. When I was just getting started as an agent, I...
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Nov.23.2009
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Last week I wrote about my experience at Cody's during the Rushdie Affair in 1989. It didn't really end the day the bomb went off. The melodrama continued for months, both in my life and in the book world.
After the bomb squad detonated the bomb in the store, I hung around for the rest of the day...
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Nov.18.2009
On February 28, 1989, Cody's was bombed. I remember being awakened by the police who informed me that a fire bomb had been thrown through the window of Cody's. The fire department had broken into the store putting out the fire. The firemen's efforts at containment did considerably more damage than...
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Nov.09.2009
Most people think of book deals as just that: a author gets paid by a publisher to publish his/her book. But it is a little more complicated than that. The book deal is a negotiation that includes, not just how much the author will get paid, but also what "subsidiary rights" will be...
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Nov.02.2009
Almost all publisher contracts pay authors through a system of royalties, a certain defined percentage of revenue based upon sales of the contracted book. The concept is simple, but it can get quite complicated in practice. Let's talk about the different formulas that publishers use in calculating...
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Oct.28.2009
Everyone in America is asking today what was Sarah Palin's advance for her book, Going Rogue. We can't say for sure, but we can calculate a range by applying some reasonable assumptions. Alaska reported that during the final six months of Palin's governorship she received a "retainer" of...
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Oct.26.2009
I've been speaking to a lot of authors lately, successful ones who make their living writing. Some of them make a pretty good living. I'm finding that a lot of them don't really understand the economic fundamentals of publishing. They don't even understand the meaning of "the book deal" a...
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Oct.19.2009
A couple of months ago, I decided to read The Chronicles of Narnia to my seven year old daughter, Hayley. It was a test to see whether she or I had the patience to read a book that was a masterpiece of children's literature and probably a little advanced for a girl of her age.. Actually we were...
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Oct.15.2009
This is a continuation of our interview with Alan Rinzler. Two weeks ago, we discussed his legendary life as an editor and publisher over the last 45 years. Alan continues to be a freelance developmental editor, one of the best. Since I often tell people that they need a freelance editor, I...
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About ANDY
I am a literary agent working out of Oakland, California. Prior to becoming an agent, I was the owner of Cody's Books for 30 years. My agency web site is: www.andyrossagency.com.
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