Do you feel lucky, punk?

You have not heard from me for a while! 

My apologies. I had an absurd April. I traveled with one teen or another from April 6 until. . . well, I am writing this from a Dance Convention in Anaheim so NOW.  So almost a month.

Keeping up with work (not to mention sanity) during this time was not easy. It’s given me time to reflect on this stage of my career. There are good and bad things about the way I do collaborative writing. 

I go very deep with a few people for a LONG TIME. Some of my peers find it strange. I make big, long bets on people, and they make big, long bets on me. It's kinda scary both ways. 

A lot of ghost writers have lots of short, no skin-in-the-game $20k contracts flowing every which way all over the place here and there without a lot of stakes. 

But I am in it. You are paying me at least $40k a person. And six figures if you get signed. For years in some cases. And I am saying no to a lot of stuff to say yes to you. 😬

So, the good of that…. 

When I am, say, in Japan for a week with my daughter, I have exactly five people to check in with. I can do a little work a day and keep up with everyone. And none of them have urgent timelines when it comes to a week. And I've done a lot of work late nights and weekends in advance to compensate. And they know how to reach me if anything is urgent. And that is delightful compared to the time scale and direct reports of decades of journalism and startups. 

The bad.

I have ALL MY EGGS in those five baskets.

When you sign with me, you might pay me more to do your proposal then you can pay some other people. And because I’m more of a thought partner, we may not know at the beginning exactly what you have. (If anything?) So you are investing maybe $40,000 in . . . ??? That is dramatically terrifying. 

But. 

I can only work with five people over a few years if everything sells. And I wouldn't say yes to you if I wasn't confident it would sell. So I have to be super careful what I pick. Because if they all sell, for years my life and income are yoked to those choices. If God Almighty comes down, and he could sell a book for eight figures. I will have to say: "Sorry, I am booked." 

And usually this all starts with a hunch. Based on ????

So right now I have five clients. Two proposals are out, both got amazing agents, one sold (at auction, six figures, and one expected to do better. Yay them. They rule!)

The others: THREE proposals are all wrapping in June/July. They’ll be going out to publishers more or less in parallel. Different agents may sign them all. Different agents work in different cycles. They are three very different books. 

They could all get signed in September. One or two could get signed later in the fall. One or two could need more work and go out in January. One or two could not get an agent. I don’t know. No one does. But I stop getting paid when those proposals are done. 

If they get signed, I have five books to write at the same time. If not, I have two to write and a massive problem in how to pay bills. If I worry and sign three more clients in the mean time and those gets signed I have EIGHT books to write????

What do I do? 

Let me give you an analogy.

We just checked into our dance hotel tonight in Orange County. I booked this hotel in January, because last year I was silly enough to think I could wait until– I dunno– March?– not realizing how big dance conventions are. We had to stay elsewhere. I had a displeased dancer.

Imagine my frustration when we checked in, and they had no record of our reservation. Knowing the hotel was months overbooked I was gearing up for a fight. When the manager came back with a room key I asked how that was possible.

"Well, it was our fault," he said. "You had a confirmation. You are here earlier. We have way more reservations than rooms. But someone will no show."

"What if they don't?"

"They always do."

"It's a huge dance convention that people have paid money to be at and have scholarships wrapped up in. What if this time your algorithms are wrong? HAVE YOU MET DANCE MOMS?"

"We will walk them to another hotel and pay for their stay."

Friends. There is no other "me" like there's another hotel across the street in Garden Grove. There is no other writer I can walk you to and tell you they can write your book. I am not sure this Hyatt realizes what it is in for with Dance Moms. But your book is even more precious than Stacey's tap dance to The Prison Cell Tango that her scholarship to USC is riding on.

So here's all I can do.

I spend now until the end of June pretending there is no other option I have except making these three books work. There are no other clients in the world for me. Because these three clients have invested this money in me. They have trusted me with their dream. That’s the game on the field. That’s all. That’s it. They are the only three people on the planet who might ever write books. Asteroids have hit everyone else who might think the word “book?” 

Because they have invested in me, and that’s only fair. 

And also. . . .all three of these proposals ARE PHENOMENAL. These are three books I picked to work on out of all the ones available to me because I SAW IT. I said no to others for a reason. And each week I see it more than ever. I am wrong about a lot of stuff, but I wasn’t on these. I am sorry, but if they don’t get deals, I wasn’t wrong. Either publishers are wrong, or I failed. But I wasn’t wrong. 

I have to go long. That’s the way I do this job. We go long on each other. I ask people to pay a premium for me. I know a lot about this market but at the end of the day no one knows anything about publishing, and I can’t guarantee anything about anything. But what I can guarantee is that I am also taking a risk on this too. 

I am so invested. 

There are so many ways I do this job differently than a lot of ghost and collaborative writers I speak with. But the biggest has to be my level of investment. I just go so deep. So early, so formative, helping people find their agents. . .

With our last win. . . I NEEDED that book to get a huge deal for the world to be RIGHT, and I have not stopped smiling a month since. I think it’s partially that I'm still coming at this from the startup world where we're all in on a dream. But I think it's also my sense of justice as a journalist and what stories should be out there. But it's also my job as a bookstore owner where I am the one putting books IN PEOPLE’S HANDS. I am not just the last mile, I am the last step to the register.

I am the only collaborative writer I know who will also actually be TALKING TO THE REPS. Even editors at the big 5 don’t understand how BRASS TACKS those conversations are. I will be the street team. I don't throw the work over the fence and hope. It doesn't end when it goes to press for me.

If it works; if it doesn’t....I’m gonna know why. Because I am THERE when someone buys it or puts it down. In a particular store; where 10 million people a year filter through to read by a pool. I'll know more than the author, the publisher, the agent or the publicist.

I say five to six yes’s a year. And those people will pay me a huge amount of money and take a huge leap of faith and that scares me maybe more than it scares them. And it scares me, because I know publishing is uncertain. Because I see a hundred launches every Tuesday. I see a hundred dreams made and crushed every Tuesday. And those are the 6% of every proposal sent in that made it to that point.

The ones who got the luxury to be crushed.

I can have every comp and all the business cases. (Because being a bookseller also gives me a lot more data.) But things can move on a dime. Everyone wants a reason to say no. I cannot bulletproof the business case, as good as I am.

I love that people trust me with their dreams and money, and I also hate it. Because there is gonna come a point where I am WRONG on a great book and I break someone’s heart. They will think I was a waste of money.

Because I sell my expertise in a way other writers don't. Because I want people to know I've got them. I want to take some of the worry off their plate, because I've also been an author three times thinking, "Is this good? Is anyone going to want this?"

Maybe I am doing this all wrong. 

But I know how much this matters. I want to be a safe pair of hands.

The people I work with aren’t writing “an expensive business card.”

This is not one prong of a marketing strategy for them.

This is not a vanity project.

This MATTERS. You do not hire me if you do not want this to be rigorous, real, through the wringer, sold in an airport ON MERIT (not paid placement), stand the test of time, and bullet proof. You want someone– anyone– somewhere in the world to read this and connect– maybe sob- and change their life or career as a result.

You want a tiny piece of your soul to be in that page. And stay there forever. And be unlocked, at any time, whenever anyone unlocks and opens and reads in and it goes into theirs in the way only books can.

And I CAN DO THAT. I can help you do that.

As a writer and a storyteller and an artist. And as a coldhearted capitalist business dealmaker who knows how to get the right deals and contracts because if that book is not commercial and read that does not happen. THAT is what I do. That is why you pay me. 

But that is because it takes my heart. And I have one of those five way divider things that I press down on my heart each year. And each book gets a slice. And I am in. 

And I can’t say, “Sure, mittens for cats” phone on mute hahaahahahhahahahah unmute “No, I think there’s a huge market for that. Send the check here.”

I will tell you if there is no market. Or I will tell you if the market will not support what you would pay me, and tell you some resources to find awesome ghost writers who are less expensive. 

Each of my books getting a slice of my heart this year should be a million copy bestseller. I would not have said yes if I did not believe that with everything I know about publishing. But I know the potential Achilles Heel of each. And as we near the proposal going out, I am probably losing more sleep than the authors. 

Wish us all luck.

Years from now, if you come in my store and I press these books in your hands with extra special intensity. . . you have some behind the scenes info of why. . .from the lobby of Anaheim dance mom chaos where at least I got a hotel room.

Hopefully my luck holds.