The Making of a Bestseller: From Author to ReaderMcFarland, 1. 1. 1999. - 234 страница Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's career itself is a metaphor for the vagaries of book publishing. If Fitzgerald would have had his way, we would today refer to The Great Gatsby as either Gold-Hatted Gatsby, Trimalchio in West Egg, or The High-Bouncing Lover. A few years before Gatsby, Fitzgerald had become a literary sensation at the age of 23; Helen Hooven Santmyer, a contemporary of Fitzgerald's, would not have a successful novel published until she was 88 and living in a nursing home. In this book, the author explores that mysterious place in publishing where art and commerce can either clash, mesh, or both. Along the way, a wide range of authors--from the literary greats to today's commercial superstars--editors, agents and publishers share their thoughts, insights and experiences: What inspires writers? (John Steinbeck, for example, wrote every novel as if it were his last, as if death were imminent.) Why are some books successful and appreciated, while others fall into oblivion? The answers are often elusive, never absolute, but the stories and anecdotes are always fascinating. |
Садржај
Preface | 1 |
A MATTER OF MYSTERY | 3 |
WINNING THE GENETIC SWEEPSTAKES | 17 |
SING O MUSE | 29 |
THE WRITING LIFE | 39 |
YOUR STUPID BOOK STINKS | 49 |
WERE ALL CONNECTED | 65 |
BARBARIANS THROUGH THE GATES | 79 |
MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE | 119 |
MAKING THE LIST | 133 |
A BOY HAS TO PEDDLE HIS BOOK | 145 |
WITH A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK | 155 |
HATS Off TO JACKIE | 165 |
APPLY IT TO THE PROBLEM | 179 |
Chapter Notes | 201 |
219 | |
Чести термини и фразе
advertising agent American asked Baker Bantam Benchley Best Sellers best-seller lists Book Review Book-of-the-Month Club bookstores called Chapter Charlton and Mark Congdon Cowley critic Doubleday editor Ernest Hemingway Faulkner fiction Gatsby Gore Vidal hardcover Ibid interviewer Irving Jack Dreyfus jacket Jackie Jacqueline Susann James Michener John Cheever John Steinbeck John Updike Judith Krantz knew Knopf letter lishers literary look luck magazine manuscript Max Perkins months movie never nonfiction novel once paperback Plimpton Press promotion publication publisher's publishing house Random House readers rejected Robert Rotten Reviews Scott Fitzgerald Scribner seems sell books Sellers list short story Side of Paradise Simon & Schuster Sixth Series sold Stephen King success talk television tell thing thousand Truman Capote turned Wall Street Journal weeks William Winokur words Writers on Writing wrote York Times Book Yorker