Here is some information and advice that some editors of fiction (Thomas Congdon, editorial director of Thomas Congdon Books, E. P. Dutton; Thomas Dunne, executive editor, St. Martin’s Press; George Glay, editorial manager, Harlequin Books; Newton A. Koltz, senior editor, Bantam Books; Richard Marek, president, Richard Marek Publishers; Maureen Baron, executive editor, Fawcett Books; Betty Prashker, editorial director of trade books, Doubleday; Ann Reit, editor, Scholastic Magazines; Sol Stein, novelist and publisher, Stein & Day) gave to some aspiring fiction writers, each paying twenty-five dollars (including lunch), at the Overseas Press Club the other day:
Word of mouth is what really sells a book. An ad in The New York Times doesn’t necessarily help, but it’s nice for the author.
Royalty statements are made out only every six months, because making them out costs a lot.
A fiction writer can write about anorexia nervosa, abortion, death, and homosexuality in hard-cover books for young adults but not in soft-cover books for young adults.
Teen-agers feel the same things as adults; they just don’t have the words for them.
The teen-age book-publishing market is a flourishing book-publishing market.
Some fiction editors will buy a proposed book after seeing only a sample chapter and an outline. Sometimes an outline will be enough, sometimes a sample chapter will be enough.
Catch your reader in the first three pages.
Every chapter should make the reader want to go on to the next.
Chemistry is very important between writer and editor.
Big scenes are very important in a novel.
Deep editing is very important in putting a novel together.
Tremendous plot is not always important in writing a novel.
If you have been a nonfiction writer and want to be a fiction writer, that can be very frightening. Journalists are afraid of length; that may be why it is hard for them to write fiction.
—February 12, 1979