In the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood

Mild Exasperation

One thing I like about my church is that the volunteer activities there often involve hard work, rather than feckless, self-esteem-enhancing piddling. Once a month, we make a lunch that we serve to outpatients at a skid-row AIDS clinic (about 20 LA churches and synagogues do this one day each month, so the lunches are served five days a week). Something like 100 lunches get served, so you're talking non-trivial amounts of sandwiches.

Over time, I've wound up making the ham and turkey sandwiches, which you have to put together from large quantities of bread, luncheon meat, lettuce, etc., that we get from a wholesale supplier. If I get in first, I can start laying out the bread and other supplies the way they ought to be done -- half a dozen or so of the big sandwich loaves spread out on the counter all at once, then put the luncheon meat on half the slices, the mustard and mayo on the other half, put the two halves together, etc. etc.

But if I don't get in first, someone else will start. They'll lay little patches of sandwich parts out on the counter and take up the rest of the area with utensils, bottles of mustard and mayo, and so forth, so that nobody else can use the area to make sandwiches. Everyone has to wait until that individual has finished making ten or a dozen sandwiches. Since this is church, there's not a whole lot you can do -- you've just got to wait and let the whole process be delayed until the individual finishes.

The other day there were two people with this style of sandwich-making working in tandem, taking their time with a few sandwiches and nibbling copiously while they did so. Finally I said, "Well, that's one way to make sandwiches. If you think about it, though, we have a lot of sandwiches to make, and it would be better if we could use the space to lay out a lot more bread and make the sandwiches all at once. We'd be done by now if we'd done it that way."

The two individuals with their little sandwich projects strongly disagreed. "I make sandwiches one loaf at a time," each one said, as though one loaf at a time implied a certain moral cleanliness.

Oh, well. It's church.

Independence Day and the American Spirit

There's been some discussion of the recent PBS series Colonial House centering on the idea that it isn't historically accurate due to the amount of dissension among the colonists, and particularly due to the "modern" liberal views some of them expressed on the program. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I did catch several of the Colonial House episodes. My main concern about the series was that, like many NPR and PBS programs, it appears to be scripted down to tiny details while trying to seem spontaneous. That will inevitably create false notes. But the "modern" sounding political views weren't, as far as I can see, among the false notes.

Those who found dissension among the colonists unhistorical, it seems to me, simply didn't pay much attention in high-school History. Many New England colonies were founded by dissident groups who left other colonies in a huff. I don't need to go into detail on this. The fact that some of the faux colonists would have issues with the religious expression or practice of other faux colonists is completely historical.

That some of the faux colonists would become so irritated at the religious views of other faux colonists as to swim in the nude is also cited as an un-historical feature of the program. However, there's a fair amount of historical record that shows American colonists of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries had decidedly "modern" views on issues like sex, marriage, nudity, and the like.

As evidence I'll cite the Rogerenes, followers of John Rogers (d. 1721). In the 1670s, Rogers, who lived in New London, Connecticut, became dissatisfied with the religious views of mainstream New Londoners, first becoming a Seventh Day Baptist and later a Quaker, but his own religious practice was outlandish to say the least. According to Carl Sifakis in American Eccentrics,

Rogers spent roughly one third of his life, after he converted, in jail for the practice of his faith. None of these punishments and fines, not the stocks, not tar and feathers, not even jail terms would stop Rogers and the Rogerenes who, over the years, grew in numbers, clearly in reaction to the closed New England mind. . . . it was Rogerene doctrine that spouses could be acquired and discarded without benefit of court or clergy.

The Rogerenes frequently disrupted church services, since they didn't believe particular times or places were any holier than others, and they also would disrobe and parade in the nude outside churches while services were in progress. Others would enter services and do things like knit loudly or conduct loud, distracting conversations.

The Rogerenes spread at least as far as New Jersey, since Henry Charlton Beck has several accounts of Rogerene activity in his book Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey. According to Sifakis, it wasn't until the 1820s that the Rogerenes died out as a sect.

So in this matter, I'm inclined to say that dissension, public nudity, doctrinal squabbles, and the like have been features of American political and religious practice from the start. These are parts of our national character. Those who endorse "family values" and similar bourgeois-conformist viewpoints in our own time are incorrect if they want to hold up our earlier history as something to emulate or return to in this matter. Our ancestors, by and large, left wherever they came from for good reason, and in an effort to build a better society experimented with all the options available.

More Agent Research

Doing more of my agent-homework, I ran across a site called Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing. It's run by a guy in Oregon named Gerard Jones, who seems determined to be a pain in the neck to just about everyone in the publishing industry (hence the name of his web site).

His main effort is to promote his largely unsold and essentially unreadable manuscripts, which he has done over the past several years by contacting every agent and publisher he's been able to identify -- and he then sends them hectoring e-mails and copies of the full manuscripts of his long novels and non-fiction pieces. If an agent or publisher is foolhardy enough to reply to the e-mails, he publishes the full correspondence on his site.

He has sample chapters of his work on his site, too, so I had a look. In light of the list of reasons manuscripts get rejected in my last post (something composed in exasperation by an editor), I would say that Jones's work seems to fall generally in the midpoint of the scale. Here's a sample paragraph:

Giselle, on the other hand, wasn't worried about anything—not Officer Harley, not terrorists, not Big Dog, nothing—well, she did worry some about her relationship with her mother and she worried some about her head, but that was it, those two things. It bothered her that she and her mother didn't get along. You'd think after all these years...but there was nothing to be done. Her mother was her mother. Giselle was Giselle. They didn't hit it off. They never had. They never would. That was all there was to it.

There's a bit too much of Tom Robbins (I checked Cowgirls on amazon.com just now, and I would say way too much) here, and it plods. The only way it holds my interest is as a clinical case study.

But after thousands of hectoring e-mails, Jones finally sold a non-fiction work, which he now complains isn't selling and isn't getting reviews. He's hawking it on his site. Isn't this perhaps an indication that an editor and an agent made a bad call here?

This brings me back to the editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden's exasperated posts on the publishing industry and writers' unreasonable expectations at Making Light. Gerard Jones's mediocre writing and his stories about agents tell me a great deal, though unintentionally. Making Light says of agents:

A bad agent is worse than no agent at all. A really bad agent is worse than not being a writer. Getting past the “no unagented submissions” barrier is not sufficient justification for hooking up with a bad agent.

She goes on to distinguish among "real agents", "gormless agents", "not very helpful agents", and "scam agents". The scammers are the easiest to tell: they want money from you up front. The question is how to find a "real agent" from among several thousand who, she suggests, are statistically much more likely to be gormless or not very helpful.

These agents have two virtues: they won’t deliberately cheat you, and they can get you past the “agented mss. only” barriers. It’s still a bit like marrying someone you don’t care for because at least that way you’ll get laid: the imagined benefits will rapidly pall, while the underlying discontents will only become more irritating.

One thing that interests me on Gerard Jones's site, since he reproduces so much of the e-mail correspondence he's had with so many agents, is how many of them give Jones the time of day -- and indeed, much more than the time of day. For instance,

Dear Mr. Jones: I would like to begin by complimenting you on a well-written effort. I think that with this manuscript you are off to a good start: you've established your voice and you've shown that you have a sense of humor, both of which are no mean feats. My biggest problem is that in its present format, the following of events as the protagonist's life unfurls quickly loses the initial punch evidenced in your very strong first chapter. . . . I think what you really need here is a tightening of the work, and to rethink the story—what is the dramatic high point? What do you want readers to remember most? I especially appreciated the misanthropic, in-your-face tone (i.e., 'so sue me') and think that this is something you have to keep, even if you do decide to rework this material. Once you've had a chance to read this letter, please feel free to give me a call. I'd like to see another version of this material, and I'd be interested in continuing to have discussions with you. I hope to hear from you soon.

So far, I haven't had any response remotely like this from any agent -- my impression is that this is an astonishing amount of effort for an agent to put into a rejection. But more than a few agents appear to be taken at least with initial chapters of Jones's stuff and ask for more. Indeed, the correspondence he reproduces from a number of the "better" agents takes this kind of tack -- first they want sample chapters, then the whole manuscript, and only then do they decide not to go ahead.

I'm inclined to agree with the editors and agents who say it's possible to tell the winners from the losers in a fairly small number of pages. So when I see agents apparently floundering around this way with material that, according to an experienced editor/blogger like Teresa Nielsen Hayden, shouldn't make the cut and ought to be culled at an early stage, it says something to me about the agent.

More later, I'm sure.

Reasons for Rejection

Via Thomas Hassan's comment to yesterday's post, I found this enumeration of reasons publishers reject manuscripts at Making Light:

Herewith, the rough breakdown of manuscript characteristics, from most to least obvious rejections:

1. Author is functionally illiterate.
   
2. Author has submitted some variety of literature we don’t publish: poetry, religious revelation, political rant, illustrated fanfic, etc.
   
3. Author has a serious neurochemical disorder, puts all important words into capital letters, and would type out to the margins if MSWord would let him.
   
4. Author is on bad terms with the Muse of Language. Parts of speech are not what they should be. Confusion-of-motion problems inadvertently generate hideous images. Words are supplanted by their similar-sounding cousins: towed the line, deep-seeded, incentiary, reeking havoc, nearly penultimate, dire straights, viscous/vicious.
   
5. Author can write basic sentences, but not string them together in any way that adds up to paragraphs.
   
6. Author has a moderate neurochemical disorder and can’t tell when he or she has changed the subject. This greatly facilitates composition, but is hard on comprehension.
   
7. Author can write passable paragraphs, and has a sufficiently functional plot that readers would notice if you shuffled the chapters into a different order. However, the story and the manner of its telling are alike hackneyed, dull, and pointless.
   (At this point, you have eliminated 60-75% of your submissions. Almost all the reading-and-thinking time will be spent on the remaining fraction.)
   
8. It’s nice that the author is working on his/her problems, but the process would be better served by seeing a shrink than by writing novels.
   
9. Nobody but the author is ever going to care about this dull, flaccid, underperforming book.
   
10. The book has an engaging plot. Trouble is, it’s not the author’s, and everybody’s already seen that movie/read that book/collected that comic.
    (You have now eliminated 95-99% of the submissions.)
    
11. Someone could publish this book, but we don’t see why it should be us.
    
12. Author is talented, but has written the wrong book.
    
13. It’s a good book, but the house isn’t going to get behind it, so if you buy it, it’ll just get lost in the shuffle.
    
14. Buy this book.
    

Aspiring writers are forever asking what the odds are that they’ll wind up in category #14. That’s the wrong question. If you’ve written a book that surprises, amuses, and delights the readers, and gives them a strong incentive to read all the pages in order, your chances are very good indeed. If not, your chances are poor.

For some reason I find this oddly encouraging.

But in this context, I direct your attention to the "Fiction Blogs" web ring at the bottom of my sidebar. A week or so ago I applied to join this, but it appears to be an abandoned idea on the part of the owner, who doesn't respond to such requests any longer, apparently (so why not delete the ring?). But browsing the sites that are on the ring, it's plain that they're among the lower-numbered types of effort in the list above, which is sad. I'll be deleting the ring from my sidebar again in the next few days.

Notes on the Publishing Process

Here are some preliminary notes on what I'm seeing in the process of finding an agent. I'll try to post on what I'm learning as I go through the process (and I hope the process will continue through further stages). It isn't my intent here to criticize individuals or even the overall process, but here and there I think parts of it can be improved. As much as possible, to avoid controversy (which I often seem to have a hard time doing) I'll use the wording on web sites and similar resources to illustrate my points. Some budding writers may feel that any type of controversy could hurt their prospects, but life itself is a risky proposition, and I'll forge ahead with at least good intentions.

One thing I'm seeing is that agents don't necessarily make it easy for writers to identify whether they're a good pick for an initial query. There are numerous listings of literary agents on the web and in print, and agents, even if their agencies don't have websites, do have the opportunity to display rough-cut profiles on what their interests and strong points are -- or even if they're not interested in unsolicited queries from new writers.

In one case, I had an enthusiastic response from an agency to my initial query on Killer App but got a rejection slip from them almost as soon as they got my sample chapters. That had me puzzled for a while, as I naturally tried to figure out what I'd done wrong -- until I finally ran across a listing of their agency on one web directory that said they mostly did "Christian" books (I doubt if they'd do C.S.Lewis, though). Most of their directory entries say they're interested in all genres. Looks like they saw my initial query, said "What a wonderful idea for a Christian book! Gotta see it!" but then discovered it wasn't what they had in mind at all. I've got to wonder why they don't make their interests clearer on all the agent directories.

Another interesting case is The Natasha Kern Literary Agency, which "was rated 11th in the list of top 25 literary agencies for new writers by Writer's Digest in its March 2003 issue." Near the top of the "About Us" section of its web site, it says, "We are a full-service agency representing adult fiction and nonfiction books." Certainly as I research possible agents to query, this might be a good choice. But just a couple of paragraphs down, it says, ". . . we specialize in popular fiction; mainstream women's fiction, including inspirational and paranormal women's fiction; romantic suspense and romantic comedies; chick-lit and mommy-lit; contemporary and historical romances; medical, legal and international thrillers; psychological suspense and mysteries; and ethnic fiction."

In other words, when you get down to specifics, Killer App might well not be on the top of their list of what interests them, or what they might be well-equipped to sell. The agency directory entries also suggest they're more oriented toward romances and "chick-lit". Should I spend postage and time and low-level psychic investment submitting sample chapters here? Based on the experience I'm beginning to pick up, probably not. Six weeks ago I might well have. While agents frequently admonish new writers to do their homework, I'm finding that agents themselves often don't make their specialties or interests clear, even on web sites where they have a perfect opportunity to do this.

The Natasha Kern agency does provide interesting material for new writers that sometimes contradicts conventional wisdom. Here's what Ms. Kern says about writers' conferences:

Five or six of the attendees out of hundreds present seemed to be garnering most of the interest of agents and editors and were being asked by perhaps ten different professionals for copies of their manuscripts or proposals. My experience over many years of attending such conferences has been that writers who are good at these “pitch sessions” almost invariably turn out to be in professions like acting, public relations or sales where they have honed their presentation skills. They can sound great and make their books seem wonderful. However, the correlation between verbal presentation skills and writing ability is zero.

She also says, "Many of the writers who were on my meeting schedule were writing books I did not even represent like horror or children's books so I could tell them virtually nothing that would be helpful and their time and mine was wasted." I wonder if part of the problem may have been that her web site or her information in agent directories wasn't as clear as it might have been. I'm picking on Ms. Kern here not individually, but as an example of what I'm sometimes seeing -- some of the agents I query say they do "literary" fiction, when it turns out that their definition of "literary" might be what's more commonly called "chick-lit" or romances. So at this point, I think some of the glut obstructing the literary process isn't just the fault of wannabe writers -- the agents themselves could be doing more to save them and us valuable time.

UPDATE: Thanks to Thomas Hassan of What does a stranger know? for his very useful comment below. I'd noted several visits from his blog in the past several days -- Thomas identifies himself as a German living in Austria, and his blog is bilingual English-German. I always appreciate the opportunity to avoid forgetting my German, so I've enjoyed my visits. I've added his blog to the blogroll here.

Union Pacific sues Lionel Trains

Normally I keep my hobby interests separate from my real-world pursuits, but this issue has such strong crossover appeal that it's worth blogging. Union Pacific Railroad has filed a civil complaint against Lionel and another model train manufacturer for "infringement of federally registered trademarks, trademark dilution under § 43(c) of the Lanham Act, Unfair Competition under § 43(a) of the Lanham Act, common law trademark infringement, unfair competition, and violation of the Nebraska Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. "

Anyone who has gone as far as watching model trains run around a loop of track in a store window knows that model and toy train manufacturers from time immemorial have reproduced real railroad identification and monograms on model equipment, such that almost all model trains carry paint, lettering, and other decoration representing them as the property of the Rock Island, the New York Central, the Santa Fe, and so forth. This practice began early in the evolution of model trains as consumer items, somewhere in the 1910s and 1920s. I have a set of old Lionel trains that was passed down from my father via my uncle, made in the 1920s, with the equipment prominently carrying the name and logotypes of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad.

Since the start of this practice 80 years ago give or take, no railroad (and that includes the Union Pacific) ever raised an objection to the appropriation by model and toy train manufacturers of its various trademarks and identifying graphics. For much of that period, the railroads appear either to have shrugged neutrally or to have cooperated with such efforts by providing copies of their own stencils and paint information, under the theory that it was free publicity. In the 1930s especially, when the railroads were trying to draw public attention to attractive new diesel locomotives and streamlined passenger equipment, they appear to have been very pleased when a company like Lionel fostered enthusiasm for the railroads' new public image with colorful models.

The other company Union Pacific is suing besides Lionel is Athearn, Inc., not a US household name but nevertheless a pioneer in making less toylike, scale model railroad equipment, and a longtime major player in this market. In the 1980s I was acquainted with one of Athearn's early employees, who began working for the company's founder, Irvin R. Athearn, after World War II. Athearn decided which products to offer by sending my friend Howard out to the Los Angeles railroad yards to take photographs of rail equipment. He'd develop his film, come back to the office, and consult closely with Athearn on the most likely items to reproduce as models.

40 years, later, Howard proudly showed me these photos, along with photos of the models he and Athearn had produced and sold from them. Union Pacific was and is a prominent railroad in Los Angeles, and not surprisingly, there were many photos of its equipment, meticulously reproduced along with its trademarks and lettering. It goes without saying that Union Pacific never complained about this to Irvin Athearn himself nor to his successors, not in 1946, not in 1956, not in 1966 -- you get the picture. Throughout this period, Athearn produced what must be hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of copies of the Union Pacific's trademarks and identifying paint schemes, without a peep from Union Pacific.

Suddenly in 2004, Union Pacific has determined that all manufacturers of toy or model trains that carry Union Pacific identifying trademarks must "participate in a licensing program", which is of course a shakedown by another name. I won't go far into further details on the specifics of Union Pacific's demands, but the railroad feels now that they are entitled to collect licensing fees not only for the use of the current Union Pacific name, but for the names of the dozens of railroads the Union Pacific absorbed during the industry consolidation of the past 30 years. Those railroads, of course, also either tolerated or actively promoted the use of their trademarks by model manufacturers for most of the past century.

I know there are several litigators who visit here frequently. As a legal amateur and the spouse of a practicing attorney, I'm told that the owner of a copyright must take measures to protect that copyright, and a history of 80 years give or take of not protecting that copyright (or in fact aiding and abetting its unpaid promulgation) puts the holder in some jeopardy of losing its exclusive use. I note also on some discussion boards that recent Supreme Court cases hold that trademark infringement can occur only when there is financial loss due to business confusion: i.e., if I sell a computer and say it's an IBM when it's not, IBM may become justly incensed and sue me silly. But if I build a model train and say it's a Union Pacific, nobody will become confused and suddenly wish to ship scrap iron or bentonite clay or automobiles on my little model.

Chessie System, a predecessor of CSX, attempted a similar shakedown of toy and model manufacturers in the early 1980s but was almost immediately forced into a retreat. The toy and model producers immediately made it known that their profit margins weren't enough to support giving Chessie a cut for protection money, and the licensing agreements were many pages long and legally tortuous. Chessie began to back off, first by changing the fees to a nominal amount, then radically shortening the agreements -- but in a Christmas Eve center-column front page story, the Wall Street Journal turned Chessie's effort to cat food by ridiculing the railroad as a modern-day Scrooge. It appears that Chessie's law department had more sense than Union Pacific's does now. Lionel and Athearn will have to stand up to Union Pacific in court.

It's a sad commentary on these enthusiasts of toy and model trains that so many appear to have an authoritarian tendency, and for some reason, opinion on the hobby-related discussion boards leans toward Union Pacific's side in the dispute. I wish my fellow hobbyists were smarter.

New York Times Article on Bullying Bosses

Via Random Pensees I learn of a somewhat superficial and johnny-come-lately piece at the New York Times on bullying bosses.

It occurs to me that I can safely say that "I wrote the book" on bullying bosses, or at least I wrote a book on bullying bosses that I finished just yesterday. So I have some comments on the article. It quotes Dr. Harvey Hornstein, a retired Columbia Teachers College professor, who found that ". . . most often . . . managers bullied subordinates for the sheer pleasure of exercising power. 'It was a kind of low-grade sadism, that was the most common reason,' he said. 'They'd start on one person and then move on to someone else.'"

The article is correct, I think, in suggesting that the social patterns that enable this behavior are complex, but its concluding observation is obtuse:

The mystifying thing about this pattern is that it does not appear to undercut productivity. Workers may loathe a bullying boss and hate going to work each morning, but they still perform. Researchers find little relationship between people's attitudes toward their jobs and their productivity, as measured by the output and even the quality of their work.

I think what the social scientists studying the problem are ignoring here is the fact that -- as Dilbert frequently points out with characters like Wally -- many employees are already about as unproductive as you can get. Even semi-serious studies of the work environment observe that the "80-20" rule applies -- 20 percent of the employees do 80 percent of the work, or conclude, as did a landmark early study of the IS environment, The Psychology of Computer Programming, that in a programmers' work group, the whole effort was sustained by one or two knowledgeable people, with the rest being carried by the real workers.

"Productivity" is a meaningless expression when this situation is so common. What's really happening is that the mediocre workers sustain the environment of institutionalized lying and petty corruption that supports the bullying bosses. The sad case is that Human Resources departments are among the biggest corporate enablers, and certainly hotbeds of institutional corruption themselves. A corporation that recognized this pattern and hired Ph.D.s tasked with making real changes would probably reduce its costs logarithmically vis-a-vis corporations that didn't, assuming it had major overhead costs in administrative functions.

Cell Phone Follies -- IV

Sign at my local post office (multiple copies hanging in prominent positions):

In an effort to minimize the wait time in line, we would appreciate you not using your cell phone during transactions with the sales associates.