Gregg and Barrett,

 

See Julia’s initial response to the manuscript, below, along with my note to her this morning.  To summarize, she’s extremely disappointed.  There’s no doubting her basic message:  this isn’t just an ordinarily messy first draft; in her mind, this is far from publishable. 

 

My sense?  I haven’t read it all, but I’ve read enough to know that it’s a long way from being something that I could even submit to another publisher—in its current shape, anyway—if Amazon were to cancel the book.  I’m not siding with Julia—I work for you guys—but objectively, you should know that I don’t think she’s way off the mark.  This needs a LOT of work.

 

BUT:  I work for you, and so for the time being the quality of the manuscript itself is irrelevant to me, because—good, or not—it’s my job to protect your interests.  And so, in service of that, I want to give you the lay of the land, OK?

 

What Julia was HOPING for in this email exchange with me was to have a collegial chat about the deficiencies of the manuscript; if I’d read the ms and agreed that it was a mess, my being “on board” with her opinion would help her facilitate her next move, whatever that might be.   And it’s on that front that I’m not going to make this easy for her.

 

The options, potentially:

 

·         she wants my OK simply to kick your butts editorially—to rant about sloppiness, but then to really be SPECIFIC about the work you need to do, and help you do it.  That would be the best possible news, because actual INPUT is exactly what we’ve hoped for.

·         it may be that she wants to suggest that we (YOU) hire an outside editor to help remedy a substandard manuscript that will otherwise be deemed unacceptable;

·         or she feel that the manuscript is so far from what she envisioned that she wants to initiate cancelation immediately.

 

My GUESS is that she wants to cancel the book outright.  If so A) she can’t just decree it thus—as I’m about to explain; and B) I can (and WILL) be obstructionist rather than cooperative, and will REQURE her to adhere to the letter of the contract, in a formal way.  Here’s the contractual language about acceptance (or non-acceptance) and what the process would be.  Cuz there actually IS a process here, as laid out below

 

 

 

 

 

So:  before they could cancel the book, if that’s what they ultimately wanted to do, FIRST they have to make a good-faith effort to provide the editorial guidance required to improve it materially.  They could still decide to reject it, after those revisions—but those revisions will almost certainly be helpful TO US in terms of reselling this elsewhere, if that’s what happens.

 

Sorry for the long email.  There are other issues here too, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have, ANY, OK?  For now, though, the balls in Julia’s court—we need to get a more specific response from her. By the way?  It’s possible that she still DOES want to make this work, and is preparing to roll up her sleeves in a serious way.  That would be IDEAL, for a bunch of reasons, because it means the book wouldn’t be delayed indefinitely before finally being published.

 

That’s all for now.  Again, call if you’d like to discuss.

 

-Dan

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Conaway
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 7:18 AM
To: Cheiffetz, Julia
Subject: RE: Do-over

 

Hey, Julia--

 

What's your sense of when G&B will be getting edits back?  Are you and Katie working on that now?  I ask not to excuse the fact that I haven't read this yet [I'm sorry to be so fucking slow--I am (literally) the slowest reader I have ever encountered] or to absent myself from the process, but because I don't want to be (can't be) the reason the process gets stalled indefinitely.  Obviously I'm sorry to hear your reaction here, and I'm not going to pretend that this doesn't need considerable editorial direction--but it's that, yours & Katie's direction / response, that's what matters & is needed here, you know?

 

-D

________________________________

Dan Conaway

Literary Agent

Writers House

 

________________________________________

From: Cheiffetz, Julia [juliac@amazon.com]

Sent: Monday, May 14, 2012 2:45 PM

To: Daniel Conaway

Subject: RE: Do-over

 

Please holler once you've read it so we can put our heads together. Without being overdramatic, I'm shocked at how disjointed and poorly written it is.

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Daniel Conaway [mailto:dconaway@WritersHouse.com]

Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:37 PM

To: Cheiffetz, Julia

Subject: Re: Do-over

 

I haven't yet, no--had hoped to have finished edits on another project this weekend and dig in, but to no avail.  It's next on the stack as soon as I do.

 

--D

 

Sent, briefly, from my phone

 

----- Reply message -----

From: "Cheiffetz, Julia" <juliac@amazon.com>

To: "Daniel Conaway" <dconaway@WritersHouse.com>, "Salisbury, Katie" <katiesal@amazon.com>

Subject: Do-over

Date: Fri, May 11, 2012 5:11 pm

 

 

 

Thanks.

 

Dan, let's chat next week. I'm very disappointed with the manuscript. Have you read it?

 

From: Daniel Conaway [mailto:dconaway@WritersHouse.com]

Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 1:04 PM

To: Cheiffetz, Julia; Salisbury, Katie

Subject: Do-over

 

Apologies again...  Hadn't realized Barrett's original was single-spaced.  Delete the previous; here's the version *I'm* printing out for myself.

 

-D

 

 

 

Dan Conaway

Literary Agent

Writers House

(212) 696-3825