Hardest part about writing a book?

Getting a decent cover:



Jayson Stark's book all about the Phillies features a giant picture of Jayson Stark underneath an ugly title that takes up more than half the cover?

 

They've done that with other guys. I think that there's a book called something like "The Maisel Factor" with a smiling Ivan on the cover.

 

That's fine if the book is about the guy, like Sal Palontonio Explains Football or whatever he has been writing. But this is a book about the Phillies!!

 

Most authors find someone who has some solid background on the subject; someone who knows where to look and who to talk to, and who can tell you what you're missing.

Otherwise, you're paying a researcher to first educate himself about your topic. I've had authors hire students or eager young reporters, and usually the results are not great.

As for the original question about the hardest part of book writing: Is there an EASY part?

 

Oh, agreed. Clearly, however, they think that their writers are big enough names that their name sells the book, not the topic. It's all part of the branding of Jayson Stark or Ivan Maisel or whoever else.

 

Mister Predictor,

That's not hard. It's impossible.

It shocked me how slipshod and last-minute publishers were with covers. I lucked out with the first cover of my Crosby bio--I knew a photog had a great portrait of him standing on the frozen St Lawrence and subsequent paperbacks were all good-looking. But inevitably the hardcovers of my other books didn't look as good as the paperbacks.

Re interviews: I know for the one historical book I put together I had 112 interviews and had to do all the photo research. (If you think the latter was easy. I dug previously unpublished photos from the archive of the long defunct official newspaper of Communist Czechoslovakia.) There were probably 20 more interviews on my list thatI wasn't able to land.

o-<

 

Waylon, Moddy:
Chasing down the dozens of interviews can be as frustrating as it is fun. It's a drag when you are going from A to B to C to wherever to get a working, correct phone number for 28 scattered individuals, but the fun part is getting the person on the phone and pulling good stuff out of them.

Biggest drag to me is transcribing. I do that more for books than nor newswriting in paper or magazine, just because of the nature of the beast. I'm not real fast taking good notes, and I want the continuity of a conversational interview instead of asking the person to hold on while I catch up.

The other tough part about writing is gearing it down---on newspaper deadline, you are cranking, looking for a rhythm and quickly making sure all your facts are right. With books, it takes a lot of patience to gear it down and 'craft' the prose a little better. That can be tough switching from the 'fast-twitch fibers' down to the 'slow-twitch.'

Getting the advance payments are nice, but usually you are so busy with the book by the time you get them, and having to eat a large chunk of them to cover your expenses, that you really don't get to enjoy them that much. But a year or two down the road, as long as your book is selling some copies, getting that $1200 royalty check out of the blue when you had pretty much forgotten about the book and moved on is pretty sweet.

 

Was it her?

 

Sirs, Madames,

Short of the Bible, a very good book with a very bad cover disappears for a writer without killing rep and advertising/publicity budget. But you have virtually no say in it.

The other thing that is tough (at least sometimes) is going through page proofs and edits on 100,000 words or so. The one second draft I did cut 20,000 words (including one section that I loved and surely the funniest thing in the book) and rewrites/restructures, eight to 12+ hrs a day 7 days a week for three weeks. Couple of days in there I woke up, sat down and edited until I went to bed ... thankfully I can still edit with two beers in me tho' I wasn't much as far as company goes.

Runnig down people in Russia by networking was hard but it might be easier in a facebooked world.

o-<

 

Yeah, this is the problem for me.

I've tried to start books two or three times and have gotten good chunks going, but then I always seem to lose my motivation or get too busy in my actual jobs to keep working on a book. The ideas always seem fantastic, the writing and limited reporting I do to start the book seem great, then I get sidetracked. I'm such a procrastinator that my personality is bad for book-writing. It's so hard for me to sit down every day and work on something that won't be finished for months. By the time I motivate myself enough to sit down and write again after not doing anything for weeks, my book ideas would seem untimely by then and I suddenly wouldn't think it was such a great idea anyways and just forget it.

I'm almost built for writing on deadline. In fact, I actually enjoy it.