Conversations | Three Guys One Book

Dear Publisher

Dear Corporate Publisher,

Since last year was the worst year in publishing history—that is, the worst year since the year before—I’ve got a few questions for you (along with some unsolicited advice):

Are you publishing all of your authors, or are you just printing most of them? Because if you’re just printing most of them, why bother? Why not re-allocate all those printing and shipping costs into marketing the books you’re actually publishing? Just a thought.

Does the reading public really need a million titles per year? Wouldn’t it be a little easier to sort out the growing demand for a hundred thousand? Don’t get me wrong, I like eclectic, I like many voices, but it seems to me a hundred thousand is a

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Preview of Mr. Peanut

JR: There seems to be a kind of wild kinetic energy to Mr. Peanut, the debut novel coming this summer from Knopf. The author, Adam Ross is no where to be seen in these pages, which always signals to me that the trick has been achieved, there is no reveal, the illusion is complete, because you’re only watching the characters that all seem to be present, like they could be your next door neighbors, standing right next to you in line at the train station. I didn’t read any cliché’s in this novel; the dialogue is crisp, so much so, that I was emailing snippets of it to friends and co-workers as I

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On Regional Literature

DH: It looks like I’m going to be snowed in this weekend. But next to my laptop is a collection of dark stories called Phoenix Noir from Akashic Books that I’m very eager to get to. It’s part of this notable pub’s series of original noir anthologies set in distinctive neighborhoods.

It got me thinking that NYC and London aren’t considered regions. They’re cosmopolitan centers where most of the media and opinion-making talking heads reside.

My favorite NYC park is the elevated High Line. On the westward side of this north/south running ribbon park is the east bank of the Hudson River. That’s the right side, the Manhattan side. Everything on the west bank side of the Hudson is a region.

But regional literature

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A Few Belated Thoughts on 2009

JC: We’re all very well aware that every newspaper, magazine, blog and website is seemingly required to list their 10 or 15, or whatever number of “best books” of the year. I guess this is kind of like that, but somewhat more amorphous. I don’t know if these are the best, and I’m not asking the guys for a specific number (hell, they don’t even have to be from 2009 – we’re rule-breakers here), but here are a few of the books I’m particularly glad to have read this year, that may or may not have been mentioned here on the blog.

In The Valley Of The Kings by Terrence Holt – Intriguing and taut, Holt’s stories reveal him as a master.
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50 Things Publishers Shouldn't Do

We’ve had so much fun with the 50 Things Writers Shouldn’t Do post (currently up to roughly a gazillion things writer’s shouldn’t do), that we decided to turn the tables, and solicit your help in creating a list of things publishers shouldn’t do.

JE:

Don’t try to capture lightening in a bottle—just promote your authors instead.
Don’t publish “the next” anything.
Don’t look for “the sure thing.”
Don’t overpay debut authors—nine times out of ten, you’re ruining at least one career.
Don’t publish debuts in HC—TPO is the way to go!
Don’t pretend that Bookscan is in any way prescriptive in negotiating author advances.
Don’t send royalty statements six weeks late.
Don’t publish so damn many titles!
Don’t put a dog on the cover of a book as a means of
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Where Have All The Guys Gone?

JE: One thing we hear at Three Guys a lot (usually from women) is how refreshing it is that we offer four very diverse (but all very “guy-ish”) perspectives on the literary and publishing landscapes. We deal mostly in the currency of literary fiction, which is a market overwhelmingly dominated by middle-aged, college educated women. Why is this? Why is it most of my dude friends stopped reading fiction in college? In the past year-and-a-half, I’ve made over thirty (you count ‘em, thirty!) personal appearances at book groups for “All About Lulu.” On average these groups are attended by anywhere from eight to twenty-five women, and they’re almost invariably gracious. But I’ve yet to see a single guy–once or twice, a

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Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

JC: When we first started 3G1B, it was a way for us to talk about books together over long distances. Now, of course, three has become four, and while our conversations have turned towards the vagaries of writing and publishing, our en masse book reviews have been replaced by other features that aren’t as difficult to orchestrate as four broad readers reading the same book at the same time, and the accompanying tome-like posts. Fortunately, JE and I coincided recently on Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply and had the chance to discuss it.

JE: Dan Chaon knows when to quit writing and tell a story. And man, can the dude spin a yarn.

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50 Things a Writer Shouldn't Do

DH: A list recently published in The New York Times by a noted restaurateur gave 100 rules for what service staff should not do. I thought a list of 50 things that writers shouldn’t do would give us all a chance to vent. I’m contributing 10 items. Some of these pet peeves have pissed me off for years:

Don’t use italics for more than one line.
Don’t tell me what someone looks like if it doesn’t matter.
Don’t make me draw a diagram to figure out who’s speaking.
Don’t write in a manner that’s different from your everyday speech. You should write like your best talk when you’re having a very good day.
Don’t start your story with a character alone in a room unless you’re
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The Smoking Cannonball

3G1B has an ongoing conversation, the subject of which: “what the hell is going to happen to publishing in the future?” disturbs us all. This week we have invited Craig Nova to tell us what he thinks. Craig is the award winning author of 12 novels. His new novel, The Informer, will be released in January 2010.

CN: the first thing that comes to mind when I consider writers and the state of publishing is one of those science fiction movies from the fifties, you know, where some light is seen in the sky and then something like a smoking bowling ball lands someplace and then a couple of geeks get out of a pickup truck. They find a stick and poke the smoking bowling

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What's a Novel For?

DH: The literate media has recently brought the criticism of Richard Poirier to my attention. I picked up a copy of his The Renewal of Literature on Amazon. I had to settle for a used copy. The book is not currently in print.

I just started it but I didn’t want to wait to discuss this issue. What’s a novel for? Why would you want to read or write one? It boils down to this. When one of us wrote All About Lulu did he do it because he wanted to becomea better person or help others to improve themselves? Like: “Thank goodness I read Lulu, it really helped me ace that job interview! Or: “I used to be a terrible person

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A Conversation on Interviews and Networking

DH: Reading is a solitary activity but I wouldn’t call it lonely. You do need to isolate yourself…keep family and friends, co-workers or surrounding strangers at bay. I’d say for at least 45 minutes. But you do have the company of the author.

The loneliest activity is writing. If reading is wading, then writing is jumping into the deep end of the pool head first.

Since The Guys have had this blog, I’ve learned that contact is possible between writers and readers. But sometimes it’s like trying to Iphone someone in a distant galaxy.

I once asked a writer on Facebook if I could interview him and he just said yes…like immediately. When

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Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?

JE: In recent months, we 3 Guys have discussed a myriad of reasons for the flagging fiction market, from antiquated business models, to unimaginative marketing approaches, to the ever-stiffening competition for the shrinking entertainment dollar, to the work itself-from the cult of the sentence to the glut of self-conscious slacker narratives. But one contributing factor we haven’t addressed, is the practitioners themselves, who, but for a few rare exceptions (Dave Eggers, anyone?) fail to capture the public imagination by virtue of a bigger-than-life persona. Literary purists will insist that this doesn’t matter, that the artist is irrelevant, and ultimately, they’ll be

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On Toiling In Obscurity

JR: I think most literary websites today are created out of frustration, by people who have been rejected by the establishment, and felt the need to set up their own shop where they could at least express themselves, but then they turn around an exclude a good percentage of the people who approach them as a creative outlet, thus they turn into what they were running from (Rumpus, Second Pass, The Millions–great new design by the way). They’ve got published authors, and most importantly aspiring writers, to provide content for their sites, as there are millions of writers out there with something to

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On Blurbs and Blurbing

JE: To blurb, or not to blurb–not even a question, as far as I’m concerned. I’m a blurb whore. So far this year, I’ve blurbed roughly a dozen authors, including Greg Olear, Greg Downs, Hesh Kestin, Ben Loory, Gina Frangello, N.L. Belardes, James P. Othmer, and our very own Jason Rice. I’ve still got a blurb pile a foot high I’m working on– so, if you’re in it, sorry for the delay. I’ve got diapers to change. And guess what? They’re all great books, as I knew in each instance they would be. And guess what else? I never lie when I blurb. Maybe sometimes my blurbs don’t use phrases like “a harrowing achievement” or “a modern classic,” but there’s

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Can Writing Be Taught?

DH: I read a novel recently that had some scenes set in a creative writing class. I remember laughing at a joke where one of the students writes a story where “rigor mortis has set in” in the first person. Almost no student in this fictional class had real talent and those few who did were subject to the jealousy of everyone else. Even the instructor was struggling to get recognition for his unpublished novel as he had to endure watching some of his students move on to professional recognition while he remained a promising failure. Later in the novel, the lead character goes to a writing workshop in Iowa. Apparently, one reason that Iowa works as a teaching venue is

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