Storygridding The Tipping Point

Stalking Horses

Storygridding The Tipping Point

It’s a little after ten a.m. on Tuesday September 3, 1996, the day after Labor Day when book publishing gets back to work. A call comes in to the editor-in-chief of Little, Brown…Bill Phillips. “He’s unable to take come to the phone at the moment, but he will return the call at his earliest convenience…. Read more »

Sales Hook Memetics

Storygridding The Tipping Point

It’s a Friday morning in the summer of 1996, around 10:15. Tina Bennett’s bosses at the Janklow & Nesbit Literary Agency have had their coffee and have read through the Times, the Journal and the Post. There are about forty-five minutes to kill before their car services ring reception to let them know that their… Read more »

Manufacturing the Pitch

Storygridding The Tipping Point

It’s 1996. Tina Bennett is a junior literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, an Aston-Martin level New York literary agency. She’s finished her after-work beer with her colleague Eric Simonoff and heads home energized. She now has a step-by-step mission. Per Simonoff’s generous counsel, here is what she’ll need to do to best represent… Read more »

Targeting Editors

Storygridding The Tipping Point

So a good agent understands how editors think…specifically, how they sort submissions. Let’s take a look at Editorial Principle Number One from the last post, “Don’t Even Think About Reading Unsolicited Submissions.” How does this knowledge translate into an effective sales approach? To avoid being thrown into the slush pile and/or being immediately handed off… Read more »

How Editors Think

Storygridding The Tipping Point

Here is how editors think about and sort projects: Principle Number One Don’t Even Think About Reading Unsolicited Submissions. This means if you get something from an agent (or God forbid an un-agented writer) that you did not ask to see, or don’t know, it’s Slush. Slush is the stuff assistants have to reject with… Read more »

Art + Commerce = Better Art

Storygridding The Tipping Point

We’re deconstructing the invisible work behind media headlines like UNKNOWN WRITER GETS A MILLION DOLLARS. Specifically the work that Tina Bennett, as just a new pup in the book world trying to earn her keep as an agent at the Janklow & Nesbit Literary Agency in 1996, did before she negotiated a seven-figure guaranteed advance… Read more »

What Good Agents Know

Storygridding The Tipping Point

So a longform piece like Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point in the June 3, 1996 edition of The New Yorker is a slam dunk easy sell as a book project, right? It went from four thousand words in a magazine to seven figures worth of guaranteed book advance just based on its level of professionalism… Read more »

Four Thousand Words for Seven Figures

Storygridding The Tipping Point

This is the kind of industry news headline that makes book-publishing people extremely uncomfortable. Bi-polar even. Because while perhaps factually accurate, the “Book Sells for Big Money” report is all sizzle. There is a certain exultation for writers and agents and editors and publishers that comes with high profile recognition. But with no acknowledgement of… Read more »

A Little Less Verbiage Please

Storygridding The Tipping Point

For fun, here’s my post from Tuesday September 15, 2015, “Narrative Altitude,” in graph form. Wish I could say this was easier to create than the words… My thanks to Dick Yaeger for the inspiration.

Narrative Altitude

Storygridding The Tipping Point

For over a decade, Malcolm Gladwell understood the opportunity and potential of the tipping point idea. And by the time he arrived at The New Yorker in 1996, chances are he’d explored many of its intellectual trails—GRODZINS ’57; SCHELLING ’69, ’71, ’78; GRANOVETTER ’78, ’83; MORLEY ’84; CRANE ’89. If only in his own head,… Read more »

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