July 3, 2024 • 52 mins
Publishing veteran Eamon Dolan—currently Vice President and Executive Editor at Simon & Schuster—has edited hundreds of books, including Eric Schlosser's FAST FOOD NATION, Richard Dawkins' THE GOD DELUSION, and Mary L. Trump's TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH. He makes his debut as an author next year with THE POWER OF PARTING - which draws on his own experience of physical and psychological abuse in childhood, as well as research on trauma and interviews with other survivors.
In one of Eamon's first interviews about his upcoming book, he discusses the difficult topic and what drew him to it, as well as what it's like to write his own book after thirty years of editing others'; what he looks for in a proposal; and what all the books he acquires have in common.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:05):
How Books Work, real talk with editors, agents, and publishing insiders.
Hosted by writers Julie Seitao and Alice Robb.
Eamon Dolan has worked as an editor at HarperCollins, Houghton, Missoula, and Penguin.
He's currently vice president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster.
During his 30-year career, he's published virtually every genre except cookbooks.
(00:30):
I do need to ask what you have against cookbooks. um
his high water
marks include eric schlosser's fast food nation stefan
fax's word freak richard dawkins the god
delusion david schaff's beautiful boy joshua fowler's moonwalking with einstein
jay shetty's think like a monk and patrick bring bring lease all the beauty
(00:54):
in the world he's also published fiction by lisa c paul theroux and donna leon
among others when he's not editing he's likely to be writing or shooting.
He's a professional photographer whose work has been shown at the International
Center of Photography and elsewhere.
And he's written a book called The Power of Parting, which will be published
in 2025 by Putnam, US and Canada, and Bluebird Macmillan in the UK,
(01:19):
along with several editions in other languages.
The Power of Parting draws on his own experience of physical and psychological
abuse in childhood, as well as research on trauma and interviews with other
survivors like himself to show how survivors can sever ties with abusive relatives to find freedom.
What a bio. Wow. Sounds intriguing. Moderate. Sounds amazing. Very intense.
(01:45):
Yeah. We'll see about that.
But I mean, we have lots of questions about like, like, we want to get your
view as someone who's like the top of publishing on.
But first, I'm just so curious how it's been writing your own book after so
many years of editing other people's books.
It's been, in short, great. I will say I never wanted to write a book.
(02:10):
As an editor, I know what a grueling, horrible task book writing is.
No matter how much you get paid, it always ends up being roughly minimum wage,
given the amount of unanticipated work that goes into it.
I've edited easily over 200, probably close to 300 books by now.
So I've seen the process up close and personal. So I know how hard it is.
(02:34):
I greatly admire authors as such.
To me, they're like ultramarathon runners or
climbers of Everest wrist or something like that you know just an incredibly
hard task that you know most humans can't or shouldn't even try to complete
and they've completed it so a lot of admiration but also a lot of like not not
(02:56):
me i'm just here on the side of the desk thank you very much.
But the the the process turned out to be pretty much as grueling as i expected
it would be but But cathartic and hope-inducing and at times even kind of fun,
(03:19):
the topic that I'm writing about, that I wrote about,
It has darkness in it, for sure. But those of us who are survivors of childhood
abuse exist largely in isolation.
A lot of the survivors I talked to said that I was the first person that they
(03:39):
had opened up to about their experiences.
And finding this community was joyful.
And I couldn't have found it. I actually there are other ways I couldn't have found it.
But I don't think I could have immersed myself in the psyches and parts of these people.
If I weren't sharing my story, if they weren't sharing their story as deeply
(04:02):
as we were sharing. So it was great.
That's amazing. That's really beautiful. I wonder what was the process if you knew how grueling it is?
You know, what was that moment when you were like, okay, I want to,
you know, jump in the pool, I'm ready to delve in and do this myself? How did that come about?
Well, pardon me. So in my day job, I had been looking for about three years
(04:28):
for someone to to write a book roughly like The Power of Parting.
I knew that estrangement could be something dramatically different than how
it was portrayed, is portrayed in society at large, and in the other books that I had seen on the topic.
There's a narrative that we're sold that estrangement is tragic.
(04:53):
And in fact, maybe it should even be avoided.
And my experience was It was exactly the opposite.
Severing ties with my mom was one of the best, three best things that I have
done in my entire life. And it was so, it was so...
Liberating for me. And I became, I really became myself once I estranged from my mother.
(05:17):
And I was, I wanted someone else to, with letters after their name or a great
journalistic profile to write about that, to write about the other side of estrangement.
And again, I looked for three years, I, you know, searched on Google Scholar.
Every time I went out to lunch or drinks with an agent, I would,
you know, tell them that this was the book on top of my wishlist.
(05:38):
And they I often say, oh, that's a great idea.
I don't really have anyone on my list for it. And then one day in early 2022,
I was out for drinks with my now agent, Todd Schuster, and I made my pitch that I usually make.
And he said, he thought for, you know, maybe a second and a half.
And he said, you should write it yourself.
(06:00):
He said, you can't find anyone else to write it. He knew me well.
We have worked on several books before. We've known each other actually since probably for 30 years.
And I initially, you know, scoffed at the idea.
And then over the weekend, I started writing the proposal. Wow. That's amazing.
So what, I mean, I feel like you must be so well equipped because you do know the ins and outs.
(06:26):
I mean, actually, interestingly, the reason why Alice and I decided to do this
podcast is because we felt like from the writer perspective,
the business side of books is so opaque and we kind of have no idea what's,
it's like a black box, what you guys do in the publishing houses.
And, you know, even though we had both written two books, like we were so clueless,
(06:47):
you know, how the process worked.
So we wanted to interview people like you to try to figure it out.
So, I mean, it must be so empowering actually to be a writer and to be so immersed
in the business side and understand exactly every step and what's happening
or was it not what surprised you you know yeah,
(07:08):
That's a great question. And I agree with the premise of it.
I definitely was in an advantageous position relative to other authors by having the day job that I have.
I will say that that did not... I still felt like I was working somewhat without
(07:29):
a net and that I was depending upon my editor and the other people at Putnam to guide me.
First of all, different houses have different processes.
The overall process is by necessity the same. You have, you know,
one, write the book, two, edit the book, three, publish the book.
But beyond that, you know, everyone has their proclivities, their jargon, and that sort of thing.
(07:57):
The processes are different, even within different imprints of the same building,
you know, so the way we do things at Simon and Schuster is somewhat different
than the way they do them at Scrivener or Atria.
And, you know, those are, those are imprints and are, you know,
in the Simon and Schuster umbrella.
So it, it, it didn't guarantee me that I would know exactly how everything was is going to go.
(08:21):
But I understood going into it that my editor had my back.
And that I think that made it easier for me to take chances on the page than
I think a lot of authors feel they can, especially first timers.
(08:45):
And also, as an editor, I know how to put books together. I still needed a lot
of wisdom from my editor, Michelle Howry, especially in organizational terms.
But the craft of putting sentences together and making sure that transitions work and.
(09:05):
Callbacks and foreshadowing and things like that, I had an advantage because
I had been helping other people do that for years.
I'm still, you know, I consider myself to be midway through the process.
The book is in production, which is in editorial terms, the biggest milestone.
But, you know, I still have to figure out how to talk about the thing,
(09:29):
you know, What are my soundbites?
You know, getting Alice Robb and Julie Sattler to write cool blurbs and other people too.
So there's still much that I could, you know, guidance that I could use.
But I also know going in, you know, roughly when the next beat will come.
So I think that I don't have a lot of the angst that authors understandably
(09:56):
have throughout the process.
Yeah. Yeah. And then how did it work with, did you like take book leave or how
was the sort of, how did you juggle every, like such a, you know,
big job with also writing your first book?
Well, I think my motto was vacation, schmaycation.
I basically took no time off. Wow. You know, to, to, for leisure or pleasure
(10:22):
between September 22 and, and, and about two weeks ago.
And I had already banked some vacation and they let you carry over some of that
into the next year at Simon.
So I was able to make good use of that time.
And I, you know, I said to myself going in and I said to my wife,
(10:44):
you know, if I'm going to do this, I'm just going to have to work seven days
a week for two years or so.
And I was able to do it. And I don't want to set myself up up as a hero or a
martyr, I was able to do it because a lot of people helped me in one way or another,
most notably my wife, but also my colleagues at Simon.
(11:06):
I didn't take a book leave per se, but I was able to, as I said,
bank my vacation and sort of stretch it out so that I could have half days,
basically for a couple of months last year when I was in the thick of doing
the interviewing and the research.
And I still acquired books, I skipped some meetings, I basically took afternoons
(11:33):
off for six or seven weeks.
And that combined with working through the holidays and that kind of thing enabled
me to pull it off. And I was also lucky.
Frankly, in terms of how the day job and the side gig ended up meshing with each other,
I had, you know, I carried a full load editorially,
(11:55):
but the projects that I edited happened to come in with, you know,
just a little, you know, sort of arranging of schedules between me and my authors.
They happened to come in during relative lulls in the writing process.
So I was really lucky that way.
And then also the two jobs are, for me at least, were complementary rather than competitive.
(12:21):
Each really felt like a break from the other. You know, researching,
writing, you know, all the psychic and practical work of writing a book is different
than the work of pitching books or editing books or assessing proposals in a
way that made each feel like a bit of a break from the other.
(12:43):
And then I was also lucky in that I was, you know, I was able to come home and,
you know, I try to work for an hour most nights and then give one day of the
weekend over to the book and the other day to my day job.
Wow. I would feel so sick of books.
Because I just know, like, while I'm working on it, I like it's hard for me
(13:04):
even like the only thing I can do is like I read sci fi as like a,
you know, as like a way to like.
Or something, you know.
So that's, that's a lot to be working on your own. And then also, you know, doing that.
That's well, dang, they I mean, you know, again, I don't want to set myself
up as some some paragon, I was really lucky that, however,
(13:26):
I'm, you know, I'm constructed in, you know, in emotional terms and cognitive
terms that the two jobs were were something of a break from, from each other.
And And the writing the book, you know, it was hard work as we've been discussing,
but it was such a positive and therapeutic experience in other ways that I think
(13:50):
that kind of energy really helped carry me through as well.
What about was there? Sorry. No, you go.
Was there were there any like tricks that you were able to borrow from all the
writers that you've worked with over the year?
I wouldn't, yes, I would say, although I can't say exactly what those tricks are.
(14:12):
I think I've just osmosed the, you know, the best aspects of my author's work.
You know, it's been a, I think I've just had this marvelous subconscious education
over the course of my 30 years that I think helped me in ways that I, that I,
(14:35):
I can't articulate, but that I feel strongly.
Scene setting, pacing, prosody.
I mean, I've worked with some marvelous authors and I'm very much of a sponge.
I can look back at an email that I wrote, say, seven years ago or 10 years ago,
and I can give you a pretty good.
(14:57):
Guess as to who I was editing at the time, because, you know,
I'll take on aspects of their style. I'll sneak into an email.
So I think, I think whatever style that I have now is the distillation of every
author I've ever worked with.
I still have a couple little like notes of things you said to me on my little like sticky note.
(15:19):
And I think my favorite was, was I just find it very comforting was when you
said that the, the harder, the easier it is to read, the harder it was to write.
Yeah. That's, that's, that's my, that's probably, I tell that every single author,
I told it to myself multiple times.
(15:40):
As I worked on this book and I believe it strongly. I feel like authors in pretend
and Alice, I'm honored that that has a place in your, among your sticky notes.
It's it i think you know one of the central illusions
of of most much art is
the illusion of artlessness you know you look at
(16:00):
it and it's so easy to take in and you think my five-year-old
could do that or it must just you know fall off their fingers onto the keyboard
and into my heart and of of course we work so hard as an editor and you know
as an author i've worked very hard so that it's very easy to take in.
(16:24):
But authors, I think, often become swept up in that fiction themselves.
You know, they read the greats, they read their favorites, and they think, my God, she's so good.
It just feels so effortless. Why can't it be that way for me?
And believe me, it is just as hard for her.
She is having just as much trouble or had just as much trouble making it seem
(16:48):
as, you know, as trouble-free as it is, as you're having right now.
Yeah. And also I think you can even succumb to that.
Like when you're looking back at your own work, like it's been five hours writing
two paragraphs and then you read it over and you're like, what's wrong?
Why am I so slow? Like, why? Yeah. Well, this is the same principle I think
(17:08):
that allows people to have second children.
They're sort of in useful amnesia, you know.
But I mean, obviously, it's so fun, too. I mean, like you said,
it was very cathartic. It sounds like for you to work on the book.
So as hard as like the craft is, you know, it's so rewarding.
(17:28):
I do wonder, like, are you feeling nervous about the publicity side now?
Because like what? So you're in production, you have a pub date,
like, tell us what is happening.
Happening so the pub date is april of
2025 we are i'll
get the copy edit back in probably a month or
so and i'll go through the process you folks know quite well i'll you know answer
(17:54):
the copy editor's queries i'll i'll take in whatever the fact checker has found
we'll you know we'll see first pass a few weeks later we'll see second pass
a few weeks after that meanwhile the process of
blurbage will commence.
They'll, you know, they'll start pitching it for, you know, publicity.
We'll start thinking about angles, that kind of thing.
(18:17):
I'm pretty, I'm pretty good at, and I think this comes from my day job too.
I'm pretty good at being in the moment and not thinking too far ahead about,
holy shit, you know, seven months from now, I'm going to have to do X and Y
and Z. I've never Z'd before. How am I going to Z?
There'll be plenty of time to worry about Z that I do. I mean,
(18:41):
if I'm, if I'm, if I'm anxious at all, I mean, I will say,
you know, I've had, you know, a few early readers who responded really positively to it, to the book.
I really, you know, I really hope it does well.
You know, I'd love to hit the list in Satlo style, but I will say I have a sense
(19:07):
of mission about this work.
Subject. And the thing, the only thing that gives me, I think it's productive
anxiety, but the only thing that gives me anxiety is, will I be able to do justice
to this topic and help people?
Can I ask, so do you worry about what your mom might think?
(19:27):
Well, I'm happy to report that my mom is dead. I will say I would have written
the book if she was still alive. She died early in COVID.
And I'll also say that, you know, that's probably the best thing she ever did for me was dying.
You know, and not giving birth to me because if I hadn't been born, I wouldn't care.
(19:48):
But even though I had been estranged from her for probably eight or so years
at that point, just having her out of the world was a huge relief.
When when we got the word that that
she had died i i heard first and i
called my sister and i told her and she said ding dong
the witch is dead and you know it's that that kind of thing i think you know
(20:12):
might shake some people up or make that makes them feel like how how how disrespectful
how unkind to speak in such a way of anybody in the world and i am not a buddhist
but i think of any spiritual practice,
that's the one that's closest to my own thinking and feeling in general.
And that doesn't feel very, it doesn't feel very much like what the Buddha would advise.
(20:34):
And yet, I think that, you know, why should I hold in high regard the person
who treated me the worst in the world?
Getting that idea across that very counterintuitive idea and making the people
who deserve to embrace it most feel like they can embrace it.
That's the thing that I'm really.
(20:54):
That's the thing that I hope to achieve. And I'm anxious about whether I'll
achieve, but, you know, I'll do my damnedest.
I have a very close friend who's estranged from her mother in the same way, does not speak to her.
And it's very painful. And it's really interesting to hear you talk about it
in that way, because part of me is always a little sad about it for her.
(21:16):
But maybe there's a reason not to feel that way.
So I think it's very powerful. well sadness is it's it go ahead alice i'm so
sorry i was just gonna say i feel like i have been reading a couple maybe your
book is coming at just the right time because i feel like i was just i think
there was just like an atlantic article about this parent like parental estrangement,
(21:39):
i feel like i've like been hearing about it a little bit more there has yeah
there has there's been something of an uptick i've seen and definitely on the
socials there's been an uptick to, through no fault of my own,
I do think that I hit the time being pretty well,
to pick up on what Julie was saying about sadness.
(22:02):
Grief and guilt are the two most reliable results of making the decision to estrange.
And I spend a good amount of time in the book talking about those
two phenomena and helping readers through those two phenomena they're inevitable
they're going to happen for a variety of reasons you know that i talk about
(22:24):
in the book but there are ways,
to process them the guilt is on is in almost in every instance unwarranted but
of course there's a huge thicket of of misconceptions that are thrust upon us
by society that make us feel or guilty, and even by our peers,
by our people who care about us. And then the grief is just inevitable.
(22:48):
And also, the grief is unlike any other kind of grief, because usually grief
is about losing something that you had, you know, losing a loved one, losing a relationship.
This kind of grief is about something you never had. And there's a whole bunch
of marvelous rituals in our culture for dealing with the first kind of grief.
(23:10):
And there really isn't any sort of.
Cultural support for the second time and I think that's part of why people feel
the way they do and I hope that I'm able to offer a little bit of that kind
of support that will help people feel a little bit better like people like your
friend Julie feel a little bit better.
(23:31):
It really, really can be and has been for me and a lot of the survivors I've
talked to ended up as a joyful experience.
We've had to find our own path to joy
until now because there's so little support as i say
um even in psychology and psychiatry there is
you know i was really lucky with my therapist but a
lot of therapists don't really know how to handle this
(23:53):
and there's a there's a prejudice in
the professions in favor of reconciliation which that's something i discovered
after after we you know we sold the book you know digging in i was like oh that's
why i couldn't find anyone you know over the course of three years to write
a book on this subject that actually is sort of pro-estrangement and here's how to tackle it.
(24:16):
Probably like a marriage counselor or something who like you know,
they're sort of pro trying to make it work when maybe, you know what I mean?
Right. It's like, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
And that's what I thought is and I will say that may be one of the ways to approach it.
I would, to my surprise, I couldn't really, you know, I talked to a couple of very.
(24:39):
Gifted couples counselors. And they were like, well, I guess you could apply some of the principles.
So even they didn't see
sort of a clear or hadn't thought about a clear or direct path
towards estrangement in the
same way they might help their clients take the
(25:01):
clearest path towards separation in a in a marriage
set so important the focus
of the podcast is on the business side of books so i do want to ask you if you
might if you wouldn't mind putting on your editor hat for a minute and talk
to us about the business right now like where you think things are i know you
(25:22):
said like for your book you feel like you're hitting it at a good time there's
been a A lot of talk. Yeah.
Fingers crossed, you know, but regardless, like it's an important mission driven book, as you said.
But, you know, there's been a lot of talk, I know, just coming out of the publicity
stuff recently about, you know, for instance, the list is very celebrity focused.
And, you know, or, you know, the big, big, you know, Eric Larson,
(25:47):
David Graham, those kind of books.
Right. And so there's there's there's minimal room for newcomers.
So I just wonder kind of how you see the industry right now,
the market. I don't know all of that, if you wouldn't mind.
No, not at all. This is a time of flux and change, as has been every time since
I started in publishing.
(26:07):
One of the things that I find having been around for 30 years is that the sky
is falling and it's always falling.
It never fully falls, though. Thank God. One of the things that I feel I,
by the way, I agree in broad terms with Julie, with what you just said about,
you know, that certainly the nonfiction list.
(26:30):
I would say, though, that there are it's it's interesting to see.
How what's still what endures so i think the fact that in that print books still,
carry as much of the market as they do at the same time that audio publishing
(26:54):
is is booming but you know sort of skyrocketing suggests to me that people still
need there are still big issues in the world,
the kind of issues that take 80 or 90 or 100,000 words to really address.
And enough people on some level realized that that's the case.
(27:15):
I do think that the nonfiction list has a notable celebrity orientation these days.
I'm not sure when it started, but let's say last couple of years, probably.
And there are some lists where the list that gets printed in the newspaper is the top 10.
(27:37):
The list that we see in publishing 10 days before that Sunday lands in the paper, that's 15.
And we usually use those 15 titles as our assessment of what's going on in the list.
And, you know, some weeks, seven of those titles are celebrity-oriented.
A couple of them are, you know, right-wing screeds. And then it's sort of,
(28:02):
some of them are brand names.
And some of them become brand names. I think a great example is,
of the latter is, you know, Jeanette McCurdy.
I'm Glad My Mom Died, which my colleague, Sean Manning at Simon & Schuster published.
Now it's almost two years ago. And that book, I think, has been on the list,
you know, 96% of the time between then and now.
(28:27):
And that didn't, that was not a celebrity book when it came out.
I mean, Jeanette McCurdy was a name familiar to some people.
She had very good following on social. But, you know,
She, you know, wasn't, you know, atop the celebrity heap by any stretch,
but she wrote something that she, you know, the title sums that book up perfectly.
(28:50):
She wrote, you know, she wrote a book that with a message summed up in the title
that no one had heard before.
And people flocked to it. A ton of people who don't follow her on social have
read that book and passed it on and probably even rewrite it.
I mean, one of the things that I think about as an editor a lot is,
(29:11):
I guess you could say, what's new?
You know, we think a lot, especially because booksellers think this way,
the bigger ones in particular, we think a lot about comp and when we're acquiring.
And comp is competitive slash comparable titles.
And there are, you know, pretty relatively strict guidelines around what constitutes comp.
(29:36):
You're looking for comp because you want to suggest that there are other books
that are like this book that have done this kind of business,
you know, that have sold this many copies in these formats.
And we think this book that's like those books could do the same.
So, you know, please order accordingly.
(29:57):
And, you know, it's not a perfect method, but it's not a terrible method either
to help booksellers understand the potential of books that you're introducing
to them, that the sales force is introducing to them.
But the books that often really work the best are the ones that have no comp.
(30:18):
And it's because there's nothing like them. And Jeanette's a great example of that.
I did a book a few years ago called Too Much and Never ever enough.
And it was by Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump.
And she is, in addition to having the distinct displeasure of being his niece,
(30:41):
she's also a clinical psychologist.
So she was able to sort of assess Trump in a way that no one else had assessed before.
And there had been a million jillion Trump books at that point,
and there are about to be a million jillion more.
And yet we thought, wow, no one's coming at it from this angle.
And no one, you know, So aside from her last name, you know,
she doesn't really have a platform or anything like that, but she's really smart
(31:03):
and she gives a fresh take on Trump.
And this might be the Trump book that women buy because that's the notable thing
is that most Trump books have been, you know, whether pro or con have been bought
mostly by men as far as we can tell.
So even that was something that was kind of hard to come, but it did,
you know, it did really well. Yeah.
(31:26):
You know, I did, you know, something over 2 million copies in the end.
Wow. Whoa. That's amazing. So that's what you, so when you're looking at acquiring,
is that kind of what you're thinking about then?
What are you like, what are you, because once I had an editor tell me,
like, she always thinks about like, what will make someone reach for a book?
Like there has to be some kind of connection or some reason why on a table of
(31:51):
books, they're going to reach for yours, you know? So you have to have something
there like that. I don't know. So I always keep that in my head.
But I wonder what you think about, you know?
I think about a lot of things. It varies somewhat from project to project.
But I'm not ducking the question. In fact, I'm going to say, here's all the things.
I mean, one criterion I use is,
(32:14):
does this book present an idea in one sentence that grabs you,
but that takes,
again, let's say 80,000 words.
That's a pretty standard length for a book these days.
(32:35):
But you have some sense that it's going to take 80,000 words to unpack it completely.
Another way I say it to myself and I say it to my authors is,
does this book ask a question in one sentence that takes 80,000 words to answer?
And another sort of a variant of what you just said is something I think of
(32:58):
as the $25 test. test, you know, is someone actually going to pay $25 for this thing?
You know, it's, you know, that's sort of a, you know, a rough number,
you know, you can go on Amazon and get it for $20 or, you know,
something like that, depending on what promotion they're running at a given time.
But basically, you could also call it the 12-hour test.
Is someone going to spend 12 hours on this, you know, in an era where that's,
(33:21):
you know, that's a season and a half of your favorite streamer, You know,
that and then a variant of that is what you might call the, you know, the thousand hour test.
Do I want to spend a thousand hours on this, you know, as an editor?
With this person, with this idea. Something else I often think about is we talked about complessness.
(33:47):
And I don't eschew comps altogether, but I'm always open to the notion like,
wow, there are no comps here.
Why are there no comps? Maybe it's because it's boring.
Or maybe it's because it, like Jeanette's book, and maybe to a degree like my
book, it dares to enter territory that no one has entered before that other
people will want to follow, you know, the past,
(34:11):
the past bond they're into.
I also think about what can I bring to it as an editor?
Like, I'm not turned, I'm not always turned off by gaps in a proposal.
And as you folks know, Most of the stuff we buy is based on proposal,
(34:33):
and proposals are sort of like a grant proposal in academia,
where you say, this is my intention to explore this particular idea.
Here's why the idea is worth exploring.
Here's what I think I might conclude, some provisional conclusions,
and here's how I might organize it.
(34:53):
So, when I'm reading a proposal and I find gaps in it, sometimes those gaps
are like, well, that, you know, we can't really publish a book that has that gap in it.
And sometimes I think, oh, how can we fill that? How might we fill that gap?
How might I help the author fill that gap?
And, you know, the genres that I tend to favor as an editor are current affairs, history, history.
(35:20):
Psychology of the hard and soft science i do
a lot of psychology i think part of why i
felt i had the chops to
write my book is because i was so you know so steeped in
psychology not just as you know as as a patient but as someone who had edited
a bunch of prominent figures in in in that field psychiatrists psychologists
(35:44):
and so i can you know i can bring that knowledge and also So, you know,
I talk to every potential author before I buy their book or before I,
you know, try to buy their book.
And I'm looking to see if, you know, I'm looking for a vibe,
(36:05):
you know, do we, you know, do we get on well together?
It's not, you know, it's not a perfect indication of what the relationship will
be like, but no first date is.
And you know there is there is
a bit of a like a first date it's like it's just someone
i want to spend a lot of time with it's so helpful to hear this perspective
(36:26):
actually don't you think alice like hear it from the outside you know yeah um
i was curious we haven't talked a lot on this podcast about like proposal i
think we've talked a lot about like the writing of the book but i'm I'm curious of the one who,
I mean, you must read many, many proposals.
I guess, like, do you think that they're a good indication of what the book will ultimately be?
(36:51):
Like, how often does a, because obviously in your work in a proposal,
you've done a certain amount of work, but you're doing it all in fact.
So you're trying to figure out how to kind of, you know, leave a little bit
of room for intrigue or letting the editor give you their ideas while also having
like a full sense of what it will be.
Yeah I don't know I just wonder if you had any like words of wisdom about the
(37:14):
art of your proposal yeah I mean basically my advice is write really good.
I mean, I would say there are a few basics.
I tend to think that, like a good length for a proposal, we can start there.
I think a good length for a proposal is 50, maybe 75 double-spaced pages.
(37:41):
And I think that those, for the kind of books I do, and indeed I think for most
nonfiction, You want to have an outline which, you know, says all the things
that I mentioned a few minutes ago.
It says, you know, why should there be a book on this topic?
Why is this topic important?
Why will people care about this topic? Why am I qualified to write about this
(38:02):
topic? Why am I impassioned enough to write about this topic?
And here's what I hope to, you know, the help I hope to offer,
the conclusions I hope to draw. all.
It is provisional by necessity, of course, like a grant proposal.
It is a description of work you haven't done yet by and large.
(38:23):
But a lot of what I'm looking for is an indication of whether the author's brain
and heart are big enough to encompass the task ahead.
So I'm thinking about what, you know, look, I'm looking at their organizational
skills. I'm looking at how good they are at pattern recognition.
I'm looking at, you know, again, can they write really good?
(38:45):
You know, that's something that is, you know, obviously, I help my authors with the writing part.
I do, you know, I'm a very, as Alice probably remembers to her horror,
I'm a pretty intense, Hence, intrusive line editor, although in Alice's case,
(39:05):
not much of that was necessary because she's.
But you definitely did a lot of structural. I remember. Yeah,
I remember when you had that breakthrough about.
Structure the whole thing. Then that doesn't often happen with editors,
you know, obviously. Right. But sometimes they're more hands off.
Or. Yeah, sure. That's true. I will say there's this persistent myth of,
(39:28):
you know, the deaths of editing. I mean, you know, and I, you know,
and to me, there's a very man bites dog quality to that.
You hear it loudly from the authors who weren't, who weren't edited properly,
but you don't hear anything from the authors, nor do you need to hear anything
except in the acknowledgements, perhaps, from the authors who weren't edited properly.
(39:48):
I've been at four publishers now in my career, and almost all,
I would say easily the majority, and I would say probably close to 90% of the
editors I worked with, were as concerned with structure with what we call top
editing and line editing,
were as concerned with those things and worked just as hard on them through
(40:11):
their nights and weekends as I did.
So bullshit to the death of editing.
Sorry, that was a little bit of an aside there, but I had to let my free play fly.
To go back to the notion of proposal,
I think you also want to have an annotated table of contents.
You know, this book will have four parts.
(40:34):
Part one will have, you know, chapter one will do this, chapter two will do
that, chapter three will do that.
And basically, you want to, you know, again, show your vision and show that
you have the organizational skills to figure out how to get from the beginning to the end.
One of the things about our work is that we, generally speaking in nonfiction,
(40:58):
we're imposing linearity on something that at least at first glance seems nonlinear.
You know, it doesn't matter what topic it is. It seems really confusing and
complicated and what the hell is going on here. year.
And people are looking to us to sort of clear away the underbrush,
focus on the things that really are, again, pattern recognition,
(41:19):
focus on the things that really matter.
And I want to see evidence in the proposal that the author has the capacity for that.
You know, even in the end, if in the end, subsequent research and reporting
shows that the pattern that was initially identified is different from the actual one,
the fact that you have the capacity and the desire to to identify patterns is
something I really wanna see in a proposal.
(41:41):
The other thing I would say is, and this is maybe more me than,
you know, specific to me than to editors in general, but I think it's useful,
So I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it anyway. Every book that I publish has an argument.
It can be overt or it can be covert. But I want the author to be trying to convince
(42:05):
me of something. I want them to try to be changing my mind.
I feel if I haven't come away from a nonfiction book with my mind changed, I feel shortchanged.
You know, I mean, this medium is better than any other, I think,
at changing people's minds.
And there's a bunch of reasons for that. It's the nature of reading itself in
cognitive and neurological as well as psychological terms.
(42:28):
There's the amount of time you spend with the author. There's this feeling of
a one-on-one conversation between you and the author, which itself is an illusion
too, because all books are collaborative between the author and the editor and
the author and early readers and all of that.
But you want to have that sense of a one-on-one collaboration.
So anyway, all of these things put put together, make a book potentially the
most convincing thing, the piece of media that you can encounter.
(42:52):
So I want my authors to be really engaged with that on some level.
And not just because it gives the material passion and the energy that comes
along with it, but also because argument is narrative.
A good argument is well-structured. And that really helps down the line when
you're like, what do I put in? What do I leave out?
(43:13):
I don't know. Well, Well, if you're making an argument, then that helps you
figure out what to leave out and figure out what to retain.
The other thing I'd say about a proposal is, for me at least,
I have found a couple of rubrics, I guess you'd call them, that when authors
(43:36):
are struggling with a proposal or struggling to rewrite a proposal,
or when I'm just reading a proposal, like does it like would it work as a syllabus
for a course if you were teaching a course on this subject what's the first
thing you teach people what's the second thing you teach them the second week
what's the third thing you teach them anything that helps in introduce a sequential,
(43:58):
arc to again a big you know fluffy multifarious topic is going to be really
helpful and there are other there are other things too in organizational terms
like concentric circles You know, if you're writing, writing about.
Whatever the topic is, it could be artificial intelligence.
(44:20):
It could be people-pleasing. I'm picking topics of recent books of my own,
that is to say books that I've edited.
You want those, you can say, how
am I going to wrap my head around people-pleasing or AI for that matter?
(44:40):
So, concentric circles is think about its effect on the individual first.
Think about its effect on interpersonal relations, how you react with your family
or friends, and then open it out.
How does it affect the community at large and then ultimately the society as
a whole? And you can also work it the other way.
(45:01):
Certain books benefit from going outside in.
But all those notions are sort of at my elbow as I'm reading a proposal and
I'm pulling them out and applying them as whichever one seems most applicable.
Applicable that's so i feel like this is
helpful probably to even if we have any listeners who
(45:23):
are not writers i feel like it's just like about thinking and
about thinking clearly and imposing yeah like
creating structure out of out of kind of messy reality yeah yeah yeah i also
feel like it's like proposals when they go well are also i mean you know we
(45:43):
complain about them a lot of work But it's like,
it's also kind of can be an opportunity for the writer to figure out if they
are actually invested enough in this topic before they go and spend a year,
a year and a half. Right for 100.
I think that's part of why I like to see a proposal that's 50 or 60 or 70 pages
long rather than one that's 20 or 30.
(46:03):
I'm like, man, if you don't care enough to dig in and write 50 pages on this,
why should I care enough to spend however many thousands of dollars and however
many hours of my time to publish the thing? Now, there are definitely are exceptions to that rule.
I've, you know, bought, you know, more than one book off of,
you know, a 12 page proposal.
(46:23):
But as a rule of thumb, I think, I think you're right.
I want, you know, I want evidence of the author's willingness to be deeply invested
in this. I think it's also fair to the author.
I mean, to go into a book project without having a document like that is so overwhelming.
And, you know, would feel I would be feel I would feel so scared that someone
(46:45):
giving me a bunch of money to do something that I haven't fully thought through,
you know, so I feel like it's also sort of reassuring to the author that they
can accomplish it, you know, so yeah, I totally agree. I agree.
I mean, basically, it should be for the author and for the editor, it should be a roadmap.
(47:05):
You know, and why would you start a big trip, any big trip without your GPS
functional or, you know, your Rand McNally, however, you know,
however old school you are.
But why would you not not start with some indication of this.
You know, the path to take on the journey ahead?
Well, Eamon, this has been so amazing. Wow.
(47:27):
Like, I really we're so grateful for you taking all this time to talk to us
and give us your wisdom and your insights. And I don't know,
I'm so excited to read your book.
And I'm going to get off this right now and tell my friend about it,
because I think she'll be so grateful that you're doing that work.
So, well, I really appreciate that, Julie and Alice, both you,
(47:49):
I got at least as much as I gave out of this conversation with you great,
smart people. Thanks for the kind words.
The The book is The Power of Parting, coming from Putnam in April 2025.
Maybe you can even pre-order by the time this podcast drops.
Knowing our technical abilities, that might very well be true.
(48:11):
Podcast production only slightly faster than book production.
Well, whenever this comes out, I can't wait to hear it.
It was so fun and enlightening to talk to both of you. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
This has been an episode of How Books Work. Join us on our next episode as we continue to explore.
Music.
Music.
(00:05):
How Books Work, real talk with editors, agents, and publishing insiders.
Hosted by writers Julie Seitao and Alice Robb.
Eamon Dolan has worked as an editor at HarperCollins, Houghton, Missoula, and Penguin.
He's currently vice president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster.
During his 30-year career, he's published virtually every genre except cookbooks.
(00:30):
I do need to ask what you have against cookbooks. um
his high water
marks include eric schlosser's fast food nation stefan
fax's word freak richard dawkins the god
delusion david schaff's beautiful boy joshua fowler's moonwalking with einstein
jay shetty's think like a monk and patrick bring bring lease all the beauty
(00:54):
in the world he's also published fiction by lisa c paul theroux and donna leon
among others when he's not editing he's likely to be writing or shooting.
He's a professional photographer whose work has been shown at the International
Center of Photography and elsewhere.
And he's written a book called The Power of Parting, which will be published
in 2025 by Putnam, US and Canada, and Bluebird Macmillan in the UK,
(01:19):
along with several editions in other languages.
The Power of Parting draws on his own experience of physical and psychological
abuse in childhood, as well as research on trauma and interviews with other
survivors like himself to show how survivors can sever ties with abusive relatives to find freedom.
What a bio. Wow. Sounds intriguing. Moderate. Sounds amazing. Very intense.
(01:45):
Yeah. We'll see about that.
But I mean, we have lots of questions about like, like, we want to get your
view as someone who's like the top of publishing on.
But first, I'm just so curious how it's been writing your own book after so
many years of editing other people's books.
It's been, in short, great. I will say I never wanted to write a book.
(02:10):
As an editor, I know what a grueling, horrible task book writing is.
No matter how much you get paid, it always ends up being roughly minimum wage,
given the amount of unanticipated work that goes into it.
I've edited easily over 200, probably close to 300 books by now.
So I've seen the process up close and personal. So I know how hard it is.
(02:34):
I greatly admire authors as such.
To me, they're like ultramarathon runners or
climbers of Everest wrist or something like that you know just an incredibly
hard task that you know most humans can't or shouldn't even try to complete
and they've completed it so a lot of admiration but also a lot of like not not
(02:56):
me i'm just here on the side of the desk thank you very much.
But the the the process turned out to be pretty much as grueling as i expected
it would be but But cathartic and hope-inducing and at times even kind of fun,
(03:19):
the topic that I'm writing about, that I wrote about,
It has darkness in it, for sure. But those of us who are survivors of childhood
abuse exist largely in isolation.
A lot of the survivors I talked to said that I was the first person that they
(03:39):
had opened up to about their experiences.
And finding this community was joyful.
And I couldn't have found it. I actually there are other ways I couldn't have found it.
But I don't think I could have immersed myself in the psyches and parts of these people.
If I weren't sharing my story, if they weren't sharing their story as deeply
(04:02):
as we were sharing. So it was great.
That's amazing. That's really beautiful. I wonder what was the process if you knew how grueling it is?
You know, what was that moment when you were like, okay, I want to,
you know, jump in the pool, I'm ready to delve in and do this myself? How did that come about?
Well, pardon me. So in my day job, I had been looking for about three years
(04:28):
for someone to to write a book roughly like The Power of Parting.
I knew that estrangement could be something dramatically different than how
it was portrayed, is portrayed in society at large, and in the other books that I had seen on the topic.
There's a narrative that we're sold that estrangement is tragic.
(04:53):
And in fact, maybe it should even be avoided.
And my experience was It was exactly the opposite.
Severing ties with my mom was one of the best, three best things that I have
done in my entire life. And it was so, it was so...
Liberating for me. And I became, I really became myself once I estranged from my mother.
(05:17):
And I was, I wanted someone else to, with letters after their name or a great
journalistic profile to write about that, to write about the other side of estrangement.
And again, I looked for three years, I, you know, searched on Google Scholar.
Every time I went out to lunch or drinks with an agent, I would,
you know, tell them that this was the book on top of my wishlist.
(05:38):
And they I often say, oh, that's a great idea.
I don't really have anyone on my list for it. And then one day in early 2022,
I was out for drinks with my now agent, Todd Schuster, and I made my pitch that I usually make.
And he said, he thought for, you know, maybe a second and a half.
And he said, you should write it yourself.
(06:00):
He said, you can't find anyone else to write it. He knew me well.
We have worked on several books before. We've known each other actually since probably for 30 years.
And I initially, you know, scoffed at the idea.
And then over the weekend, I started writing the proposal. Wow. That's amazing.
So what, I mean, I feel like you must be so well equipped because you do know the ins and outs.
(06:26):
I mean, actually, interestingly, the reason why Alice and I decided to do this
podcast is because we felt like from the writer perspective,
the business side of books is so opaque and we kind of have no idea what's,
it's like a black box, what you guys do in the publishing houses.
And, you know, even though we had both written two books, like we were so clueless,
(06:47):
you know, how the process worked.
So we wanted to interview people like you to try to figure it out.
So, I mean, it must be so empowering actually to be a writer and to be so immersed
in the business side and understand exactly every step and what's happening
or was it not what surprised you you know yeah,
(07:08):
That's a great question. And I agree with the premise of it.
I definitely was in an advantageous position relative to other authors by having the day job that I have.
I will say that that did not... I still felt like I was working somewhat without
(07:29):
a net and that I was depending upon my editor and the other people at Putnam to guide me.
First of all, different houses have different processes.
The overall process is by necessity the same. You have, you know,
one, write the book, two, edit the book, three, publish the book.
But beyond that, you know, everyone has their proclivities, their jargon, and that sort of thing.
(07:57):
The processes are different, even within different imprints of the same building,
you know, so the way we do things at Simon and Schuster is somewhat different
than the way they do them at Scrivener or Atria.
And, you know, those are, those are imprints and are, you know,
in the Simon and Schuster umbrella.
So it, it, it didn't guarantee me that I would know exactly how everything was is going to go.
(08:21):
But I understood going into it that my editor had my back.
And that I think that made it easier for me to take chances on the page than
I think a lot of authors feel they can, especially first timers.
(08:45):
And also, as an editor, I know how to put books together. I still needed a lot
of wisdom from my editor, Michelle Howry, especially in organizational terms.
But the craft of putting sentences together and making sure that transitions work and.
(09:05):
Callbacks and foreshadowing and things like that, I had an advantage because
I had been helping other people do that for years.
I'm still, you know, I consider myself to be midway through the process.
The book is in production, which is in editorial terms, the biggest milestone.
But, you know, I still have to figure out how to talk about the thing,
(09:29):
you know, What are my soundbites?
You know, getting Alice Robb and Julie Sattler to write cool blurbs and other people too.
So there's still much that I could, you know, guidance that I could use.
But I also know going in, you know, roughly when the next beat will come.
So I think that I don't have a lot of the angst that authors understandably
(09:56):
have throughout the process.
Yeah. Yeah. And then how did it work with, did you like take book leave or how
was the sort of, how did you juggle every, like such a, you know,
big job with also writing your first book?
Well, I think my motto was vacation, schmaycation.
I basically took no time off. Wow. You know, to, to, for leisure or pleasure
(10:22):
between September 22 and, and, and about two weeks ago.
And I had already banked some vacation and they let you carry over some of that
into the next year at Simon.
So I was able to make good use of that time.
And I, you know, I said to myself going in and I said to my wife,
(10:44):
you know, if I'm going to do this, I'm just going to have to work seven days
a week for two years or so.
And I was able to do it. And I don't want to set myself up up as a hero or a
martyr, I was able to do it because a lot of people helped me in one way or another,
most notably my wife, but also my colleagues at Simon.
(11:06):
I didn't take a book leave per se, but I was able to, as I said,
bank my vacation and sort of stretch it out so that I could have half days,
basically for a couple of months last year when I was in the thick of doing
the interviewing and the research.
And I still acquired books, I skipped some meetings, I basically took afternoons
(11:33):
off for six or seven weeks.
And that combined with working through the holidays and that kind of thing enabled
me to pull it off. And I was also lucky.
Frankly, in terms of how the day job and the side gig ended up meshing with each other,
I had, you know, I carried a full load editorially,
(11:55):
but the projects that I edited happened to come in with, you know,
just a little, you know, sort of arranging of schedules between me and my authors.
They happened to come in during relative lulls in the writing process.
So I was really lucky that way.
And then also the two jobs are, for me at least, were complementary rather than competitive.
(12:21):
Each really felt like a break from the other. You know, researching,
writing, you know, all the psychic and practical work of writing a book is different
than the work of pitching books or editing books or assessing proposals in a
way that made each feel like a bit of a break from the other.
(12:43):
And then I was also lucky in that I was, you know, I was able to come home and,
you know, I try to work for an hour most nights and then give one day of the
weekend over to the book and the other day to my day job.
Wow. I would feel so sick of books.
Because I just know, like, while I'm working on it, I like it's hard for me
(13:04):
even like the only thing I can do is like I read sci fi as like a,
you know, as like a way to like.
Or something, you know.
So that's, that's a lot to be working on your own. And then also, you know, doing that.
That's well, dang, they I mean, you know, again, I don't want to set myself
up as some some paragon, I was really lucky that, however,
(13:26):
I'm, you know, I'm constructed in, you know, in emotional terms and cognitive
terms that the two jobs were were something of a break from, from each other.
And And the writing the book, you know, it was hard work as we've been discussing,
but it was such a positive and therapeutic experience in other ways that I think
(13:50):
that kind of energy really helped carry me through as well.
What about was there? Sorry. No, you go.
Was there were there any like tricks that you were able to borrow from all the
writers that you've worked with over the year?
I wouldn't, yes, I would say, although I can't say exactly what those tricks are.
(14:12):
I think I've just osmosed the, you know, the best aspects of my author's work.
You know, it's been a, I think I've just had this marvelous subconscious education
over the course of my 30 years that I think helped me in ways that I, that I,
(14:35):
I can't articulate, but that I feel strongly.
Scene setting, pacing, prosody.
I mean, I've worked with some marvelous authors and I'm very much of a sponge.
I can look back at an email that I wrote, say, seven years ago or 10 years ago,
and I can give you a pretty good.
(14:57):
Guess as to who I was editing at the time, because, you know,
I'll take on aspects of their style. I'll sneak into an email.
So I think, I think whatever style that I have now is the distillation of every
author I've ever worked with.
I still have a couple little like notes of things you said to me on my little like sticky note.
(15:19):
And I think my favorite was, was I just find it very comforting was when you
said that the, the harder, the easier it is to read, the harder it was to write.
Yeah. That's, that's, that's my, that's probably, I tell that every single author,
I told it to myself multiple times.
(15:40):
As I worked on this book and I believe it strongly. I feel like authors in pretend
and Alice, I'm honored that that has a place in your, among your sticky notes.
It's it i think you know one of the central illusions
of of most much art is
the illusion of artlessness you know you look at
(16:00):
it and it's so easy to take in and you think my five-year-old
could do that or it must just you know fall off their fingers onto the keyboard
and into my heart and of of course we work so hard as an editor and you know
as an author i've worked very hard so that it's very easy to take in.
(16:24):
But authors, I think, often become swept up in that fiction themselves.
You know, they read the greats, they read their favorites, and they think, my God, she's so good.
It just feels so effortless. Why can't it be that way for me?
And believe me, it is just as hard for her.
She is having just as much trouble or had just as much trouble making it seem
(16:48):
as, you know, as trouble-free as it is, as you're having right now.
Yeah. And also I think you can even succumb to that.
Like when you're looking back at your own work, like it's been five hours writing
two paragraphs and then you read it over and you're like, what's wrong?
Why am I so slow? Like, why? Yeah. Well, this is the same principle I think
(17:08):
that allows people to have second children.
They're sort of in useful amnesia, you know.
But I mean, obviously, it's so fun, too. I mean, like you said,
it was very cathartic. It sounds like for you to work on the book.
So as hard as like the craft is, you know, it's so rewarding.
(17:28):
I do wonder, like, are you feeling nervous about the publicity side now?
Because like what? So you're in production, you have a pub date,
like, tell us what is happening.
Happening so the pub date is april of
2025 we are i'll
get the copy edit back in probably a month or
so and i'll go through the process you folks know quite well i'll you know answer
(17:54):
the copy editor's queries i'll i'll take in whatever the fact checker has found
we'll you know we'll see first pass a few weeks later we'll see second pass
a few weeks after that meanwhile the process of
blurbage will commence.
They'll, you know, they'll start pitching it for, you know, publicity.
We'll start thinking about angles, that kind of thing.
(18:17):
I'm pretty, I'm pretty good at, and I think this comes from my day job too.
I'm pretty good at being in the moment and not thinking too far ahead about,
holy shit, you know, seven months from now, I'm going to have to do X and Y
and Z. I've never Z'd before. How am I going to Z?
There'll be plenty of time to worry about Z that I do. I mean,
(18:41):
if I'm, if I'm, if I'm anxious at all, I mean, I will say,
you know, I've had, you know, a few early readers who responded really positively to it, to the book.
I really, you know, I really hope it does well.
You know, I'd love to hit the list in Satlo style, but I will say I have a sense
(19:07):
of mission about this work.
Subject. And the thing, the only thing that gives me, I think it's productive
anxiety, but the only thing that gives me anxiety is, will I be able to do justice
to this topic and help people?
Can I ask, so do you worry about what your mom might think?
(19:27):
Well, I'm happy to report that my mom is dead. I will say I would have written
the book if she was still alive. She died early in COVID.
And I'll also say that, you know, that's probably the best thing she ever did for me was dying.
You know, and not giving birth to me because if I hadn't been born, I wouldn't care.
(19:48):
But even though I had been estranged from her for probably eight or so years
at that point, just having her out of the world was a huge relief.
When when we got the word that that
she had died i i heard first and i
called my sister and i told her and she said ding dong
the witch is dead and you know it's that that kind of thing i think you know
(20:12):
might shake some people up or make that makes them feel like how how how disrespectful
how unkind to speak in such a way of anybody in the world and i am not a buddhist
but i think of any spiritual practice,
that's the one that's closest to my own thinking and feeling in general.
And that doesn't feel very, it doesn't feel very much like what the Buddha would advise.
(20:34):
And yet, I think that, you know, why should I hold in high regard the person
who treated me the worst in the world?
Getting that idea across that very counterintuitive idea and making the people
who deserve to embrace it most feel like they can embrace it.
That's the thing that I'm really.
(20:54):
That's the thing that I hope to achieve. And I'm anxious about whether I'll
achieve, but, you know, I'll do my damnedest.
I have a very close friend who's estranged from her mother in the same way, does not speak to her.
And it's very painful. And it's really interesting to hear you talk about it
in that way, because part of me is always a little sad about it for her.
(21:16):
But maybe there's a reason not to feel that way.
So I think it's very powerful. well sadness is it's it go ahead alice i'm so
sorry i was just gonna say i feel like i have been reading a couple maybe your
book is coming at just the right time because i feel like i was just i think
there was just like an atlantic article about this parent like parental estrangement,
(21:39):
i feel like i've like been hearing about it a little bit more there has yeah
there has there's been something of an uptick i've seen and definitely on the
socials there's been an uptick to, through no fault of my own,
I do think that I hit the time being pretty well,
to pick up on what Julie was saying about sadness.
(22:02):
Grief and guilt are the two most reliable results of making the decision to estrange.
And I spend a good amount of time in the book talking about those
two phenomena and helping readers through those two phenomena they're inevitable
they're going to happen for a variety of reasons you know that i talk about
(22:24):
in the book but there are ways,
to process them the guilt is on is in almost in every instance unwarranted but
of course there's a huge thicket of of misconceptions that are thrust upon us
by society that make us feel or guilty, and even by our peers,
by our people who care about us. And then the grief is just inevitable.
(22:48):
And also, the grief is unlike any other kind of grief, because usually grief
is about losing something that you had, you know, losing a loved one, losing a relationship.
This kind of grief is about something you never had. And there's a whole bunch
of marvelous rituals in our culture for dealing with the first kind of grief.
(23:10):
And there really isn't any sort of.
Cultural support for the second time and I think that's part of why people feel
the way they do and I hope that I'm able to offer a little bit of that kind
of support that will help people feel a little bit better like people like your
friend Julie feel a little bit better.
(23:31):
It really, really can be and has been for me and a lot of the survivors I've
talked to ended up as a joyful experience.
We've had to find our own path to joy
until now because there's so little support as i say
um even in psychology and psychiatry there is
you know i was really lucky with my therapist but a
lot of therapists don't really know how to handle this
(23:53):
and there's a there's a prejudice in
the professions in favor of reconciliation which that's something i discovered
after after we you know we sold the book you know digging in i was like oh that's
why i couldn't find anyone you know over the course of three years to write
a book on this subject that actually is sort of pro-estrangement and here's how to tackle it.
(24:16):
Probably like a marriage counselor or something who like you know,
they're sort of pro trying to make it work when maybe, you know what I mean?
Right. It's like, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
And that's what I thought is and I will say that may be one of the ways to approach it.
I would, to my surprise, I couldn't really, you know, I talked to a couple of very.
(24:39):
Gifted couples counselors. And they were like, well, I guess you could apply some of the principles.
So even they didn't see
sort of a clear or hadn't thought about a clear or direct path
towards estrangement in the
same way they might help their clients take the
(25:01):
clearest path towards separation in a in a marriage
set so important the focus
of the podcast is on the business side of books so i do want to ask you if you
might if you wouldn't mind putting on your editor hat for a minute and talk
to us about the business right now like where you think things are i know you
(25:22):
said like for your book you feel like you're hitting it at a good time there's
been a A lot of talk. Yeah.
Fingers crossed, you know, but regardless, like it's an important mission driven book, as you said.
But, you know, there's been a lot of talk, I know, just coming out of the publicity
stuff recently about, you know, for instance, the list is very celebrity focused.
And, you know, or, you know, the big, big, you know, Eric Larson,
(25:47):
David Graham, those kind of books.
Right. And so there's there's there's minimal room for newcomers.
So I just wonder kind of how you see the industry right now,
the market. I don't know all of that, if you wouldn't mind.
No, not at all. This is a time of flux and change, as has been every time since
I started in publishing.
(26:07):
One of the things that I find having been around for 30 years is that the sky
is falling and it's always falling.
It never fully falls, though. Thank God. One of the things that I feel I,
by the way, I agree in broad terms with Julie, with what you just said about,
you know, that certainly the nonfiction list.
(26:30):
I would say, though, that there are it's it's interesting to see.
How what's still what endures so i think the fact that in that print books still,
carry as much of the market as they do at the same time that audio publishing
(26:54):
is is booming but you know sort of skyrocketing suggests to me that people still
need there are still big issues in the world,
the kind of issues that take 80 or 90 or 100,000 words to really address.
And enough people on some level realized that that's the case.
(27:15):
I do think that the nonfiction list has a notable celebrity orientation these days.
I'm not sure when it started, but let's say last couple of years, probably.
And there are some lists where the list that gets printed in the newspaper is the top 10.
(27:37):
The list that we see in publishing 10 days before that Sunday lands in the paper, that's 15.
And we usually use those 15 titles as our assessment of what's going on in the list.
And, you know, some weeks, seven of those titles are celebrity-oriented.
A couple of them are, you know, right-wing screeds. And then it's sort of,
(28:02):
some of them are brand names.
And some of them become brand names. I think a great example is,
of the latter is, you know, Jeanette McCurdy.
I'm Glad My Mom Died, which my colleague, Sean Manning at Simon & Schuster published.
Now it's almost two years ago. And that book, I think, has been on the list,
you know, 96% of the time between then and now.
(28:27):
And that didn't, that was not a celebrity book when it came out.
I mean, Jeanette McCurdy was a name familiar to some people.
She had very good following on social. But, you know,
She, you know, wasn't, you know, atop the celebrity heap by any stretch,
but she wrote something that she, you know, the title sums that book up perfectly.
(28:50):
She wrote, you know, she wrote a book that with a message summed up in the title
that no one had heard before.
And people flocked to it. A ton of people who don't follow her on social have
read that book and passed it on and probably even rewrite it.
I mean, one of the things that I think about as an editor a lot is,
(29:11):
I guess you could say, what's new?
You know, we think a lot, especially because booksellers think this way,
the bigger ones in particular, we think a lot about comp and when we're acquiring.
And comp is competitive slash comparable titles.
And there are, you know, pretty relatively strict guidelines around what constitutes comp.
(29:36):
You're looking for comp because you want to suggest that there are other books
that are like this book that have done this kind of business,
you know, that have sold this many copies in these formats.
And we think this book that's like those books could do the same.
So, you know, please order accordingly.
(29:57):
And, you know, it's not a perfect method, but it's not a terrible method either
to help booksellers understand the potential of books that you're introducing
to them, that the sales force is introducing to them.
But the books that often really work the best are the ones that have no comp.
(30:18):
And it's because there's nothing like them. And Jeanette's a great example of that.
I did a book a few years ago called Too Much and Never ever enough.
And it was by Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump.
And she is, in addition to having the distinct displeasure of being his niece,
(30:41):
she's also a clinical psychologist.
So she was able to sort of assess Trump in a way that no one else had assessed before.
And there had been a million jillion Trump books at that point,
and there are about to be a million jillion more.
And yet we thought, wow, no one's coming at it from this angle.
And no one, you know, So aside from her last name, you know,
she doesn't really have a platform or anything like that, but she's really smart
(31:03):
and she gives a fresh take on Trump.
And this might be the Trump book that women buy because that's the notable thing
is that most Trump books have been, you know, whether pro or con have been bought
mostly by men as far as we can tell.
So even that was something that was kind of hard to come, but it did,
you know, it did really well. Yeah.
(31:26):
You know, I did, you know, something over 2 million copies in the end.
Wow. Whoa. That's amazing. So that's what you, so when you're looking at acquiring,
is that kind of what you're thinking about then?
What are you like, what are you, because once I had an editor tell me,
like, she always thinks about like, what will make someone reach for a book?
Like there has to be some kind of connection or some reason why on a table of
(31:51):
books, they're going to reach for yours, you know? So you have to have something
there like that. I don't know. So I always keep that in my head.
But I wonder what you think about, you know?
I think about a lot of things. It varies somewhat from project to project.
But I'm not ducking the question. In fact, I'm going to say, here's all the things.
I mean, one criterion I use is,
(32:14):
does this book present an idea in one sentence that grabs you,
but that takes,
again, let's say 80,000 words.
That's a pretty standard length for a book these days.
(32:35):
But you have some sense that it's going to take 80,000 words to unpack it completely.
Another way I say it to myself and I say it to my authors is,
does this book ask a question in one sentence that takes 80,000 words to answer?
And another sort of a variant of what you just said is something I think of
(32:58):
as the $25 test. test, you know, is someone actually going to pay $25 for this thing?
You know, it's, you know, that's sort of a, you know, a rough number,
you know, you can go on Amazon and get it for $20 or, you know,
something like that, depending on what promotion they're running at a given time.
But basically, you could also call it the 12-hour test.
Is someone going to spend 12 hours on this, you know, in an era where that's,
(33:21):
you know, that's a season and a half of your favorite streamer, You know,
that and then a variant of that is what you might call the, you know, the thousand hour test.
Do I want to spend a thousand hours on this, you know, as an editor?
With this person, with this idea. Something else I often think about is we talked about complessness.
(33:47):
And I don't eschew comps altogether, but I'm always open to the notion like,
wow, there are no comps here.
Why are there no comps? Maybe it's because it's boring.
Or maybe it's because it, like Jeanette's book, and maybe to a degree like my
book, it dares to enter territory that no one has entered before that other
people will want to follow, you know, the past,
(34:11):
the past bond they're into.
I also think about what can I bring to it as an editor?
Like, I'm not turned, I'm not always turned off by gaps in a proposal.
And as you folks know, Most of the stuff we buy is based on proposal,
(34:33):
and proposals are sort of like a grant proposal in academia,
where you say, this is my intention to explore this particular idea.
Here's why the idea is worth exploring.
Here's what I think I might conclude, some provisional conclusions,
and here's how I might organize it.
(34:53):
So, when I'm reading a proposal and I find gaps in it, sometimes those gaps
are like, well, that, you know, we can't really publish a book that has that gap in it.
And sometimes I think, oh, how can we fill that? How might we fill that gap?
How might I help the author fill that gap?
And, you know, the genres that I tend to favor as an editor are current affairs, history, history.
(35:20):
Psychology of the hard and soft science i do
a lot of psychology i think part of why i
felt i had the chops to
write my book is because i was so you know so steeped in
psychology not just as you know as as a patient but as someone who had edited
a bunch of prominent figures in in in that field psychiatrists psychologists
(35:44):
and so i can you know i can bring that knowledge and also So, you know,
I talk to every potential author before I buy their book or before I,
you know, try to buy their book.
And I'm looking to see if, you know, I'm looking for a vibe,
(36:05):
you know, do we, you know, do we get on well together?
It's not, you know, it's not a perfect indication of what the relationship will
be like, but no first date is.
And you know there is there is
a bit of a like a first date it's like it's just someone
i want to spend a lot of time with it's so helpful to hear this perspective
(36:26):
actually don't you think alice like hear it from the outside you know yeah um
i was curious we haven't talked a lot on this podcast about like proposal i
think we've talked a lot about like the writing of the book but i'm I'm curious of the one who,
I mean, you must read many, many proposals.
I guess, like, do you think that they're a good indication of what the book will ultimately be?
(36:51):
Like, how often does a, because obviously in your work in a proposal,
you've done a certain amount of work, but you're doing it all in fact.
So you're trying to figure out how to kind of, you know, leave a little bit
of room for intrigue or letting the editor give you their ideas while also having
like a full sense of what it will be.
Yeah I don't know I just wonder if you had any like words of wisdom about the
(37:14):
art of your proposal yeah I mean basically my advice is write really good.
I mean, I would say there are a few basics.
I tend to think that, like a good length for a proposal, we can start there.
I think a good length for a proposal is 50, maybe 75 double-spaced pages.
(37:41):
And I think that those, for the kind of books I do, and indeed I think for most
nonfiction, You want to have an outline which, you know, says all the things
that I mentioned a few minutes ago.
It says, you know, why should there be a book on this topic?
Why is this topic important?
Why will people care about this topic? Why am I qualified to write about this
(38:02):
topic? Why am I impassioned enough to write about this topic?
And here's what I hope to, you know, the help I hope to offer,
the conclusions I hope to draw. all.
It is provisional by necessity, of course, like a grant proposal.
It is a description of work you haven't done yet by and large.
(38:23):
But a lot of what I'm looking for is an indication of whether the author's brain
and heart are big enough to encompass the task ahead.
So I'm thinking about what, you know, look, I'm looking at their organizational
skills. I'm looking at how good they are at pattern recognition.
I'm looking at, you know, again, can they write really good?
(38:45):
You know, that's something that is, you know, obviously, I help my authors with the writing part.
I do, you know, I'm a very, as Alice probably remembers to her horror,
I'm a pretty intense, Hence, intrusive line editor, although in Alice's case,
(39:05):
not much of that was necessary because she's.
But you definitely did a lot of structural. I remember. Yeah,
I remember when you had that breakthrough about.
Structure the whole thing. Then that doesn't often happen with editors,
you know, obviously. Right. But sometimes they're more hands off.
Or. Yeah, sure. That's true. I will say there's this persistent myth of,
(39:28):
you know, the deaths of editing. I mean, you know, and I, you know,
and to me, there's a very man bites dog quality to that.
You hear it loudly from the authors who weren't, who weren't edited properly,
but you don't hear anything from the authors, nor do you need to hear anything
except in the acknowledgements, perhaps, from the authors who weren't edited properly.
(39:48):
I've been at four publishers now in my career, and almost all,
I would say easily the majority, and I would say probably close to 90% of the
editors I worked with, were as concerned with structure with what we call top
editing and line editing,
were as concerned with those things and worked just as hard on them through
(40:11):
their nights and weekends as I did.
So bullshit to the death of editing.
Sorry, that was a little bit of an aside there, but I had to let my free play fly.
To go back to the notion of proposal,
I think you also want to have an annotated table of contents.
You know, this book will have four parts.
(40:34):
Part one will have, you know, chapter one will do this, chapter two will do
that, chapter three will do that.
And basically, you want to, you know, again, show your vision and show that
you have the organizational skills to figure out how to get from the beginning to the end.
One of the things about our work is that we, generally speaking in nonfiction,
(40:58):
we're imposing linearity on something that at least at first glance seems nonlinear.
You know, it doesn't matter what topic it is. It seems really confusing and
complicated and what the hell is going on here. year.
And people are looking to us to sort of clear away the underbrush,
focus on the things that really are, again, pattern recognition,
(41:19):
focus on the things that really matter.
And I want to see evidence in the proposal that the author has the capacity for that.
You know, even in the end, if in the end, subsequent research and reporting
shows that the pattern that was initially identified is different from the actual one,
the fact that you have the capacity and the desire to to identify patterns is
something I really wanna see in a proposal.
(41:41):
The other thing I would say is, and this is maybe more me than,
you know, specific to me than to editors in general, but I think it's useful,
So I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it anyway. Every book that I publish has an argument.
It can be overt or it can be covert. But I want the author to be trying to convince
(42:05):
me of something. I want them to try to be changing my mind.
I feel if I haven't come away from a nonfiction book with my mind changed, I feel shortchanged.
You know, I mean, this medium is better than any other, I think,
at changing people's minds.
And there's a bunch of reasons for that. It's the nature of reading itself in
cognitive and neurological as well as psychological terms.
(42:28):
There's the amount of time you spend with the author. There's this feeling of
a one-on-one conversation between you and the author, which itself is an illusion
too, because all books are collaborative between the author and the editor and
the author and early readers and all of that.
But you want to have that sense of a one-on-one collaboration.
So anyway, all of these things put put together, make a book potentially the
most convincing thing, the piece of media that you can encounter.
(42:52):
So I want my authors to be really engaged with that on some level.
And not just because it gives the material passion and the energy that comes
along with it, but also because argument is narrative.
A good argument is well-structured. And that really helps down the line when
you're like, what do I put in? What do I leave out?
(43:13):
I don't know. Well, Well, if you're making an argument, then that helps you
figure out what to leave out and figure out what to retain.
The other thing I'd say about a proposal is, for me at least,
I have found a couple of rubrics, I guess you'd call them, that when authors
(43:36):
are struggling with a proposal or struggling to rewrite a proposal,
or when I'm just reading a proposal, like does it like would it work as a syllabus
for a course if you were teaching a course on this subject what's the first
thing you teach people what's the second thing you teach them the second week
what's the third thing you teach them anything that helps in introduce a sequential,
(43:58):
arc to again a big you know fluffy multifarious topic is going to be really
helpful and there are other there are other things too in organizational terms
like concentric circles You know, if you're writing, writing about.
Whatever the topic is, it could be artificial intelligence.
(44:20):
It could be people-pleasing. I'm picking topics of recent books of my own,
that is to say books that I've edited.
You want those, you can say, how
am I going to wrap my head around people-pleasing or AI for that matter?
(44:40):
So, concentric circles is think about its effect on the individual first.
Think about its effect on interpersonal relations, how you react with your family
or friends, and then open it out.
How does it affect the community at large and then ultimately the society as
a whole? And you can also work it the other way.
(45:01):
Certain books benefit from going outside in.
But all those notions are sort of at my elbow as I'm reading a proposal and
I'm pulling them out and applying them as whichever one seems most applicable.
Applicable that's so i feel like this is
helpful probably to even if we have any listeners who
(45:23):
are not writers i feel like it's just like about thinking and
about thinking clearly and imposing yeah like
creating structure out of out of kind of messy reality yeah yeah yeah i also
feel like it's like proposals when they go well are also i mean you know we
(45:43):
complain about them a lot of work But it's like,
it's also kind of can be an opportunity for the writer to figure out if they
are actually invested enough in this topic before they go and spend a year,
a year and a half. Right for 100.
I think that's part of why I like to see a proposal that's 50 or 60 or 70 pages
long rather than one that's 20 or 30.
(46:03):
I'm like, man, if you don't care enough to dig in and write 50 pages on this,
why should I care enough to spend however many thousands of dollars and however
many hours of my time to publish the thing? Now, there are definitely are exceptions to that rule.
I've, you know, bought, you know, more than one book off of,
you know, a 12 page proposal.
(46:23):
But as a rule of thumb, I think, I think you're right.
I want, you know, I want evidence of the author's willingness to be deeply invested
in this. I think it's also fair to the author.
I mean, to go into a book project without having a document like that is so overwhelming.
And, you know, would feel I would be feel I would feel so scared that someone
(46:45):
giving me a bunch of money to do something that I haven't fully thought through,
you know, so I feel like it's also sort of reassuring to the author that they
can accomplish it, you know, so yeah, I totally agree. I agree.
I mean, basically, it should be for the author and for the editor, it should be a roadmap.
(47:05):
You know, and why would you start a big trip, any big trip without your GPS
functional or, you know, your Rand McNally, however, you know,
however old school you are.
But why would you not not start with some indication of this.
You know, the path to take on the journey ahead?
Well, Eamon, this has been so amazing. Wow.
(47:27):
Like, I really we're so grateful for you taking all this time to talk to us
and give us your wisdom and your insights. And I don't know,
I'm so excited to read your book.
And I'm going to get off this right now and tell my friend about it,
because I think she'll be so grateful that you're doing that work.
So, well, I really appreciate that, Julie and Alice, both you,
(47:49):
I got at least as much as I gave out of this conversation with you great,
smart people. Thanks for the kind words.
The The book is The Power of Parting, coming from Putnam in April 2025.
Maybe you can even pre-order by the time this podcast drops.
Knowing our technical abilities, that might very well be true.
(48:11):
Podcast production only slightly faster than book production.
Well, whenever this comes out, I can't wait to hear it.
It was so fun and enlightening to talk to both of you. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
This has been an episode of How Books Work. Join us on our next episode as we continue to explore.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.