Book 5

New book proposal written overnight, submitted to editor of Book 4. Editor loves idea, pitches to pub board. Pub board loves idea, agrees to make offer. Editor/agent have celebratory lunch: Despite Book 4's lackluster sales, publisher is certain Book 5 will be my Biggest Book Yet. Editor No. 2 Who Still Loves Me (despite dismal sales of Book 4) says, "We want you to be a house author. We believe in you."

Despite eerie echoes of E#1WSLM, my Midlist Author's heart sings. At last I've found what every author wants: loyal publisher for life. Editor leaks terms of forthcoming offer: $80,000, since Book 5 is "so much more commercial" than my previous books.

Editor reassures agent daily that offer is forthcoming. Offer does not forthcome.

Three weeks after celebratory lunch, normally overly optimistic agent calls, sounding near tears. "It's bad, Jane. They're not going to make an offer." Mr. Big III overrode pub board. Citing lackluster sales of Book 4, wants to avoid "throwing good money after bad."

Comment to agent: "My career as a writer is over."

Agent's answer: "They're not the only publisher in town."

Comment to agent: "They're one imprint of the biggest publisher in town, which means we can't sell the book to any of that publisher's other 15 imprints. And I'm already banned from Publisher No. 1 and its 15 imprints. How many publishers does that leave?"

Current status: Rewritten Book 5 rejected by nine editors. Most love book; all say it's "not commercial enough." Three-times-rewritten manuscript currently under consideration by four -- oops, just received rejection e-mail from editor whose boss says it's not commercial enough -- three "interested editors," two in same Manhattan high-rise as editors who have already rejected it.

Conveying news of latest rejection, agent mentions we'll be lucky to get $50,000; explains, "Publishers aren't overpaying anymore. They know they'll just break even if they pay $50,000 and sell 20,000 copies in hardcover, which few books ever do."

I realize if I'm "overpaid" I'll earn $50,000 minus $7,500 agent commission. That's $42,500 for three years' work. Agent, who's now spent five months doing back flips to sell book, will earn $3,000 less than she would have if book had sold to Book 4 publisher as planned.

Despite estimated 20 cents per hour pay earned while in my employ, agent tells me, "Just because publishers define success by the numbers, you don't have to. You write important books. You should feel proud of yourself. And you must keep writing."

Sales: Interested editor tells me during phone interview, "Ten years ago, a book that sold 20,000 copies was considered a dud. Now we pray for that."

Pray, and, apparently, pay accordingly.

Conclusion Drawn Now: When a book "fails to meet expectations," many are candidates for blame. But whether commercial failure results from market conditions, moon in Mercury retrograde, or publisher/editor/publicist/sales force/author malfeasance, the consequences are the same. Those with jobs keep them. Only the author's livelihood is threatened. Only the author is punished.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"'Celeste' [my editor of several previous books] offered a measly rotten $25K again. I countered with $35 plus foreign and it looks like I'll get that. I mean, I didn't earn out even at the pittance I am advanced so I didn't expect much. But, perhaps, perhaps, to keep my morale up, you could hint to [publishing people you know] that I have been offered a ludicrous amount of money? Please? If we could start a rumor like that it would be helpful all around. I am sort of relieved that it will just be a one-book deal this time. Even though that makes me insecure, it also means that when I turn [interesting character] into my next book, I will be free to attempt to actually get six figures."

There Was a Time

"There was a time when writers of serious books not destined to become bestsellers could expect to get contracts from publishers that included decent terms and large enough advances to survive until the next book. Today such expectations are rarely met ... While publishers lavish large sums of money and lots of attention on a few high-profile authors, conditions have grown increasingly bad for those writers known as midlist authors."

-- Phil Mattera, vice president, National Writers Union, op. cit.

There was a time, just a decade ago, when my life as a writer brimmed with hope and promise; when the world of work and words seemed open to endless possibility; when the music my editors and I made together -- the appreciation and, yes, the love they felt for me, the appreciation and love I felt for them -- made my heart sing in my chest and my words sing on the page.

There was a time when my life as a writer overrode my innate cynicism and doubt, moved me to tell my young daughter, cornball as it seemed even then, that dreams do come true, if you really want them to. Because what is a book made of, if not the spun sugar of a writer's wildest dreams?

"Does it ever get better?" I asked Patty, my most successful writer friend, recounting my midlist author's tale of woe.

"Not substantially," she answered. "My books sell well now, but I never stop wondering what'll happen to me when they don't."

"So why do we bother?" I moaned.

"Because this is the thing we do best," she said simply. "What else would we do?"

That question came home to me last week when, for the first time in 15 years, someone offered me a job. Without hesitation -- I'm a writer! -- I turned it down. Then I went home to another editor's rejection e-mail and called my agent, who advised me to take it. Of all the bad news you've given me, I said, this might be the worst. Have you given up on me as a writer?

"You'll always be a writer," she said. "But you won't be able to write if you're as worried about money and feeling as rejected as you've been. Maybe the thing that feels like it would strangle you will actually give you some room to breathe. When we sell the next book you can always quit the job."

My husband, greatest fan on earth of my writing, said the same thing. So did my best friend, and my father, and everyone else I asked. Clearly I hadn't been suffering in as much silence as I'd thought. Clearly, everyone who loves me had been worried about me. "Taking the job would feel like admitting failure," I told my now 19-year-old daughter, the girl I raised to believe that dreams do come true.

"You already succeeded as a writer, Mom," she said. "So what if you didn't make the All-Star team? You made the NBA."

I called my new -- gulp -- employer and accepted the job.

Interlude: A Midlist Author Friend Writes

"I'm having the worst publishing experience ever here. Every day it gets worse. It's like some kind of out-of-control nightmare that won't stop until this book has been completely killed and buried. Yesterday, I was debating whether or not to borrow some money to hire an independent publicist, but today I don't know if I can afford to risk it. At this point, it all seems like gambling. The book went on sale Tuesday (well, supposedly -- you can't find it here in [my hometown], even though this was the only place a review ran) -- one of the most depressing launches ever."

I Count Among the Losses

Looking back on my writing career I count among the losses the relationships -- indescribably intimate, more like marriages than friendships -- with the editors I counted on, and spoke to nearly every day for all the years of our contractual agreements, and loved and still love, who love me too but will never publish me again.

I count among the losses my conviction that mixing love and art and business is a risk worth taking, and that doing without any of these things isn't.

I count among the losses the hundreds of thousands of dollars that my books cost the publishers who believed in me enough to treat me respectfully and pay me well, and I count among the losses the profits I continue to generate for the one publisher who didn't.

I count as my greatest loss of all: hope, the most toxic, precious thing any writer has. Without a writer's foolish fantasies -- envisioning Book 5 piled in stacks of 50 in every airport bookstore, its carefully chosen title appearing on the Times bestseller list, my agent calling with breathtakingly, indisputably, non-euphemistically good news -- how can I face the otherwise overwhelming prospect of a book waiting to be written?

If I can't bring myself to hope that I'll have the chance to write Book 5, so my heart can be filled and emptied and broken again; if the privilege of being published hurts too much to be the thing I hope for, what will pull me -- and the multitudes of other midlist authors, who are, after all, the vast majority of published writers in this country -- through the long, unlit tunnel of writing another one?

What will we lose if writers like me stop writing? What are we losing now?

The End?

I ran into Patty the day her ninth book became her first to hit the Times bestseller list. She grabbed me by the shoulders, looked deep into my eyes. "It doesn't change anything," she said grimly. "My mother still doesn't approve of me. I still don't have a boyfriend. I still can't sleep at night. Don't let this be what you're waiting for."

And yet I wait for my agent's call, telling me there's another chance that it could happen for me.

And so I wait. And I wait.

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