On March 16, in my “Second Letter to Subscribers,” I announced a forthcoming three-part bonus series in which I would dish about agents, editors, and book reviewers I’ve dealt with in a career that includes writing books and also writing for magazines. The first exposé, “Midnight in the Garden of Literary Agents,” posted on June 7. This is the second one. Look for part three, “The Bonfire of the Book Reviewers’ Vanities,” on June 21.
Editors? I’ve had a few. Many of the periodicals I wrote for are now defunct, and on others the mastheads have changed unrecognizably. Wayne Lawson of Vanity Fair — an extraordinary editor — although now retired remains as active as ever. I wrote about him in Bonus Number 7.
In general, freelance writers have shorter and less detailed professional relationships with magazine editors than authors have with editors of their books. Indeed, magazine editors and their contributors often do not meet face to face. Before emails and texts, they communicated primarily by letter and by telephone. Without belaboring my good fortune, I’ll mention several outstanding magazine editors who used my work in the ‘80s and ‘90s, among them Coleman Lollar at Frequent Flyer, Mary Kaye Stray at Relax, Sybil Steinberg at Publishers Weekly, Steven Henry Madoff at Artnews, and Paige Rense and Mary Chesterfield at Architectural Digest. I met all except the latter two, who were based in California and I in New York.
In Bonus Number 18 I referred to Don Fine, the editor who acquired my first book, the novel M.M. II: The Return of Marilyn Monroe. His reputation was that of a brusque, street-tough editor-publisher. Braced for the worst, I found him a New York gent behind the bluff.
Beginning in 1969, Don Fine nourished a number of bestselling authors, including Ken Follett and Elmore Leonard. His specialty was thrillers and mysteries. My novel shared a few traits with those genres, but it was more than anything a what-if Hollywood novel. Unfortunately, its publication in February 1991 coincided with the Persian Gulf War, i.e., the invasion of Iraq by Bush the First. That war dominated the press; goodbye to the feature on me that People had planned. Despite the odds, M.M. II did better than first novels often do, one reason being that I followed the recommendations of book publicists at the time: I networked, visited bookstore managers, wrote to hometown newspapers, signed books at Borders and other booksellers, accepted interview requests from radio hosts and giveaway weeklies.
Prior to that, however, when I received page proofs of the book I discovered that Don had made several careless emendations to my text. For instance, he had a character who was driving north on the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica make a left turn rather than a right — meaning they would motor onto a sandy beach and land smack-dab in the surf.
Like an overprotective parent, I was alarmed. I phoned Al Lowman, my agent at the time. “Tell Mr. Fine,” I said, “to expect me first thing tomorrow morning.”
A typical day, apparently, at Donald I. Fine, Inc.: he was darting here and there like a French baker frantic over baguettes, commanding an art director, scolding the copy editor, spewing scarasm on still another employee, all of whom seemed inured to his interventions. I heard him say, half to himself and half to me, regarding a young man who had just left the room, “Adam can’t piss and hold his dick at the same time.” Having just shaken hands with Adam, I mulled the implications of Don’s statement.
I’m not sure why, but Don Fine and I hit it off. We settled into a quiet room away from the bleatings and cacaphony, discussed the problematic proof pages, and he smiled when I grumbled about that Cadillac plunging into the waves. We parted as friends, with a few gruff jokes, and several years later he sold his publishing firm to Penguin. That was not good news, for I would gladly have worked with him again.
At St. Martin’s Press, which published my next five books, my editor was Elizabeth Beier, a vibrant, with-it, clever, witty, senior editor whose topsy-turvy office on an upper story of the Flatiron Building I described back in Chapter Nine. Although the title “acquiring editor” is not often used, it could apply to Elizabeth and to any editor who signs up an author and his book. Various others, with specific titles, soon go to work on the manuscript: the copy editor scrutinizes every line, every word, for typos, solecisms, even factual errors even though that is the author’s responsibility. She also makes certain that the manuscript conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style (the benchmark authority on usage except in academic publishing), so that, for instance, the text does not read “Forty-second Street” (the correct form) on one page and “Forty-Second street” on another and “42nd Street” on still another — unless the latter refers to the title of the 1933 film or to another title, such as Vanya on 42nd Street (1994).
Here’s how bad copy editing differs from the expert kind: in a recent novel published in London, I came across “Psalm Sunday” rather than “Palm Sunday”; a quote from the Qur’an attributed to “Mohammad, The Arabian Nights”; and this sentence: “Whether Mariano were genuinely impressed, concerned for his son or relieved to have him off his hands, Sandro never knew.”
The correct verb form is was, not were. That copy editor apparently mistook this for a contrary-to-fact sentence such as “If I were you…” Which is isn’t.
Then there is the managing editor, whose responsibility might be described as “keeping all trains running on schedule.” In other words, he or she is major-domo in charge of producing nearly-perfect books. A formidable task. Proof readers search for typos and other errors that might have escaped the sharp eye of the copy editor, and finally a good managing editor spots problems overlooked by everyone else, including the author.
Elizabeth Beier was an unusual editor — “old school,” as I described her with admiration — because she combed my manuscripts line by line, making helpful comments and suggestions along the way. (Whatever the opposite of “old school” may be, it’s to blame for much that’s wrong with today’s publishing industry). I’m not boasting when I say that I turn in clean copy. It’s my job, and the job of any writer, to do so. But it’s a truism that everyone needs an editor. A second, a third, even a fourth pair of eyes guarantees a book that’s grammatically and factually correct, typo-free, and possibly worth the cover price.
“Aha,” you may say. “But Substack has no editor.” I’ll just add that two writer friends vetted the present book chapter by chapter as I wrote it.
Not all acquiring editors read as thoroughly as Elizabeth did. An acquaintance assured me that her editor did not so much as skim her manuscript, even when she begged him to. And another lamented that New York’s gold standard publishing house sent him page proofs riddled with overlooked typos.
My first book with St. Martin’s, All About “All About Eve,” was nicely copy edited. But the managing editor at that time, who departed soon after, did a lousy job. A number of technical problems escaped her notice in the hardcover edition, and for that reason I’ve urged readers to choose the paperback, which came out a year later. Or listen to the audio version.
My next four books at St. Martin’s, all acquired and edited by Elizabeth Beier, had the good fortune of Kevin Sweeney as managing editor and Carly Sommerstein as the city’s best copy editor. For each one of my books, Carly made a style sheet of several pages. I keep them nearby for reference. Two examples: (1) Lowercase the word “embassy”: the Russian embassy, except in quoted material; (2) Dates: August 1st; August 1, 1970; the fall of 1970; the fifties; the 1950s.
If I have deviated in these chapters, it’s my fault for not memorizing her every point.
“This, too, shall pass.” A wise aphorism, attributed to a medieval Persian Sufi, that cuts both ways: bad times peter out but eventually we also lose the happy ones. My blue skies with Elizabeth at St. Martin’s turned to smog.
In Bonus Number 18, my discussion of literary agents, I mentioned that in 2014 Jim Donovan rejected my proposal for a book that I considered hugely important. St. Martin’s had published, two years earlier, the book that was to be my final one there. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Beier asked whether I would consider a making-of book on Mildred Pierce. My flippant answer: “I’ll do it if I can leave out Joan Crawford.”
It was a silly thing to say, and not accurate. I don’t dislike that much maligned star; I wrote to her as a kid and received not only an autographed picture but a letter as well. What I meant in my retort was that I didn’t relish the thought of spending two years with Joan, the time necessary to complete such a book. I hesitated also because I felt unqualified to discuss Mildred Pierce in the wider context of film noir, a genre outside my comfort zone.
Months passed. After Jim Donovan rejected the proposal, I sent it to Elizabeth. No response. Emails not answered; phone calls unreturned. This from an editor who, a few years earlier, had given me her personal phone numbers and her out-of-town contacts when she traveled. Who had invited me to lunch or breakfast whenever I was in New York. Finally, she happened to pick up her office phone. A hurried chat, I asked whether she had had time to consider the proposal. “It’s not right for us,” she said. “And I’m late for lunch with a colleague.”
I tried two or three other editors at St. Martin’s. No response. That’s how it feels to be blacklisted.
Why the cold shoulder? Two possibilities: my latest book hadn’t met expectations of the sales force; and I was discontinuing film history for a more LGBT direction. There had been not a single cross word between my editor and me. The stark reality is that editors, agents, and publishers follow the business model of Hollywood moguls and of pimps: when you no longer bring in the dough— “don’t call us, sweetheart…”
But my motto is, “I won’t be defeated,” or “Ego non victus” in high school Latin. The book they rejected — next year on Substack!
In 2018 Eric Myers, my agent at the time, received two offers for Finding Zsa Zsa: The Gabors Behind the Legend. I chose Kensington, the New York publisher, rather than the one in a different city. One reason was the seeming eagerness for the book by Kensington’s editorial staff. Another was the conventional wisdom that New York is the locus of professional publishing and that other U.S. cities don’t quite have the moxie. (That wisdom has become less wise.)
Contract signed, I traveled to New York on a double mission: research on Finding Zsa Zsa, and on another book as well, at the New York Public Library; and a meeting with Eric Myers and with Kensington’s editor-in-chief, John Scognamiglio. At lunch I mentioned to John how much I value a good copy editor. I said, “At St. Martin’s, I surely had the best one in New York. Do you know Carly Sommerstein?”
“You’ll meet her in an hour,” he replied, leaving me speechless. By an extraordinary coincidence, she had recently come to Kensington from St. Martin’s. After the meal John and I walked the short distance to Kensington’s offices, where I visited all those I would be working with, including Carly.
The future seemed as lovely as a classical landscape on a museum wall. Ah, but beware of serpents in beautiful gardens.
John Scognamiglio was a superb editor: generous with the advance, agreeable when I asked for more pages than specified in the contract, amenable to a few extra months beyond the contract’s manuscript delivery date. The art director consulted me on cover possibilities until he found the one that pleased us both. And of course Carly Sommerstein was perfect, as usual. Kensington resembled publishing paradise until…the viper reared its venomous head.
Most non-fiction books are vetted by a lawyer, who may be a full-time employee of the publishing house or freelance. Exceptions to such scrutiny are cook books, travelogues, some memoirs but not all — decisions are made case-by-case. The legal vetting takes place above all to spot, and remove, libelous statements. Anything detrimental or defamatory about a living person comes out. For instance, in one of my St. Martin’s books I described an obscure actor as, in his butt-twitching early years, “a male starlet.” The lawyer had me change the designation to “contract player.” Public figures and the notorious are generally not covered by libel laws, nor are the dead.
Then there are such topics as fair use and permission to quote printed material and to reproduce photographs. The U.S. copyright laws are complex, ambiguous, a vast gray area made even murkier by the Internet.
Kensington’s lawyers — one in-house, the other an outsider — seemed strangely unversed in a number of these matters, with the result that they made my life hell. For example, the outsider required permission for an excerpt of two hundred words quoted from the New York Daily News, but not for quotations of five hundred words and more from similar sources. He demanded written permission for photographs taken in Hungary in the 1930s — apparently ignorant of the destruction and death of World War II, the Holocaust, the Iron Curtain, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956!
Added to this headache, I learned that no one at Kensington had heard of Photofest — a famous Manhattan agency that has long supplied celebrity photos and many other materials to virtually every U.S. book and magazine publisher. This struck me as a blind spot almost as big as not having heard of Macy’s. My contract stipulated “40 to 50” photographs, meaning two separate photo inserts in the book. Eventually, twenty-two were used. Even these involved tiresome wrangles.
At one point I became so disgusted that I decided to withdraw the manuscript. Here is my “don’t-fuck-with-me” email, sent to the editor-in-chief:
This communication will cause you distress, and for that I am truly sorry. You have been a good and generous editor. The absurd requirements of your lawyers, however, both in-house and outside, make it impossible for me to continue with Kensington. For that reason, I have instructed my agent, Eric Myers, to withdraw the manuscript.
I realize now that it was a mistake to bring my book, “Finding Zsa Zsa: The Gabors Behind the Legend,” to a publisher that specializes in genre fiction, and that has only a few celebrity biographies in its list. That difficulty, however, could be easily overcome were it not for the ridiculous interference of the lawyers. Both seem unacquainted with the customary, as well as the statutory, parameters of fair use. As the author of six previous books, and as a former magazine editor, I am well acquainted not only with fair use but also with permissions for quoted passages, photographs, and the like. None of my earlier books encountered such a vetting as this. The most risible example is surely the outside lawyer’s statement that “it would be best to have this in writing.” He refers to a dead person, viz., the late Francesca Hilton. Your own comment following his -- “She’s dead, so how could you get something in writing?” -- tells me that you are fully aware of the outrageousness of such a request. There are others; you know which ones they are, and why they resemble a parody on Saturday Night Live.
This is for me an important book, and I will not have it mutilated. As soon as the manuscript is officially withdrawn, I will immediately refund the advance.
Should Kensington be so unwise as to proceed with publication against my wishes, I will speak out against the book on social media. I will also enlist numerous friends and acquaintances to do the same, explaining all the reasons that publication by Kensington resulted in a botched and unreliable book. Nor would there be any interviews except to excoriate the rotten treatment that I received. I have informed my lawyer to take appropriate action if necessary.
I see one possible solution to this crisis. I ask that you go to Mr. Steven Zacharius, who as President and CEO has the authority — and, I hope, the wish — to overrule the irrational and erratic dictates of Kensington’s lawyers.
That was sent on a Thursday. By Monday, after compromises on both sides, the project went forward.
In retrospect, I see a major problem in Kensington’s lack of familiarity with books on Hollywood, on celebrities, on show business in general. Their genres didn’t match mine. At the time of the Gabor fiasco, they had published a biography of John Wayne, the autobiography of minor actress Olivia Hussey, and very little else in my line — hardly an auspicious backlist from my point of view.
Was the Kensington affair really a fiasco? My agent at the time did not support me fully in my refusal to be bullied. Such lack of advocacy for a client is unusual, and not easily overlooked. Even so, the book was published in a handsome hardcover edition, it was widely reviewed, and an audio version was excellently read by the actor Paul Boehmer.
A far happier experience than Kensington arrived even before the book was published. I learned that for some time Amy Sherman-Palladino (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Gilmore Girls) had been on the lookout for a book on which to base a film or miniseries about the Gabors. I’m not sure how she heard about Finding Zsa Zsa, but having read either the manuscript or the pre-publication galley, she quickly took an option. Once more the protective parent, I requested a phone interview with Amy before signing the option agreement. I knew immediately that she was right for the project.
One other odd obstruction from Kensington, this one from the publisher. The jacket copy originally mentioned three members of the Gabor family as “Holocaust survivors.” Imagine my surprise when John Scognamiglio, my editor, informed me that the publisher objected to that designation as “too restrictive.” Instead, the bland first sentence on the jacket flap reads, “In 1945, after barely escaping Hitler’s invasion of Hungary followed by ‘liberation’ of the country by the Red Army, three members of the Gabor family — Jolie, her ex-husband Vilmos, and their daughter Magda — arrived in New York City.”
At first it seems a minor point. Except that the Holocause is still news, and always will be, and to omit three Jewish persons whose names were on a manifest for Auschwitz seems not only morally wrong but financially shortsighted. The Gabors as Holocaust survivors would surely have drawn greater attention to the book. Instead, silly reviewers equated them with the Kardashians.
What must those people think who aided my research at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem? They would have every right to condemn revisionism verging on desecration.
Why am I hanging out soiled laundry in public? First of all to warn newer writers what they might encounter in contemporary publishing, and to encourage them to resist. And second, to expose the ugly side of an industry that used to paint itself as a gentlemanly profession and now plumes itself, top to bottom, on inclusivity and equality and championing the downtrodden. There is that good side of it, to be sure.
There is also a quality-be-damned corporate drive for quick bucks above all else — an Elon Musk mentality whose vulgarity and overarching ignorance account for the dismal offerings you’ll find at Barnes and Noble and among many online booksellers. This trend is unlikely to change.
Substack promises a viable alternative. It’s the best one I’ve come across so far.