On the New Breed in Publishing
While I have long been pleased to say my friends span nearly every living generation, from teenagers to octagenerians, I have had reason to consider myself young. I’m the younger sister. I’m [mumble] years younger than my husband Daniel. And I’m often the youngest person in social gatherings — particularly those made up of the higher age range of my friends. So, it came as a rude awakening to recognize that a new, younger generations has come up and is changing publishing.
Ben Salmon, an agent at Rights Unlimited, is one of the New Breed making an impact on what books are now being published. When I photographed and interviewed him, I asked him to help me understand what defines and distinguishes his generation. After all, as an author, I need to know what they want.. what would sell to them.
Needless to say, Ben is young. (”Not that I believe that age has much to do with talent,” he told me. ”But let’s stick with mid- to older twentysomething”). Angular and thin, with a slightly spikey faux-hawk haircut, precisely trimmed goatee, and explosive laugh, he has a presence and style somewhat reminiscent of bas-reliefs I’ve seen of ancient Assyrian kings. Looking through the camera lens, I couldn’t help but feel that he’s managed to make himself into the embodiment of the type of books he likes…. Edgy.
The first task in understanding a new generation is to “get” their language, the vernacular they use to describe what they like — and what they don’t like. “Edgy” is a word I hear frequently these days. They all seem to want books that are edgy. Yikes! What the heck is that supposed to mean?
Ben explained it within context. “A lot of what I do tends to be a little edgy or a little quirky or a little sexy, a little young. A little bit of something – attitude, personality – I call it the outer ring of mainstream. So, it’s still going to have mass appeal. It’s still going to make the New York Times bestseller list, but has something that makes you cock your head and say, ‘Wow! That’s an interesting perspective, that’s something new.’” In fiction, he feels that ”Bee Season” by Maya Goldberg or “Or the Curious Case of the Dog in the Night Time” by Mark Haddon are good examples, for their successful quirkiness.
Of course, every generation struggles to define itself as different, not realizing how much has already been done before. (”Everything old is new again.”) In this case, however, the young agents and editors I’ve been meeting recently definitely have a distinctive, common manner, and many acknowledge that they share a similar mindset.
But when I asked Ben what that mindset was, he had difficulty pinpointing exactly what it is. “I think there’s a lot more outward energy and passion involved. We’re becoming more nimble and we can move faster; we might be a little more empathetic to the author, but not quite as tweedy. Tweedy. You know, like the old tweed jackets and the two martini lunches. Although I also think that’s partly a societal and partly a gender thing. Because it used to be the old boy’s club and it’s changed to… well, the joke is that it is changed to women and gay men in publishing now. People in publishing, especially in the younger set, are more likely to put emotion and passion and energy into their projects. And they make them personal.”
Older agents also talk about passion, how they have to be excited about a book and author, before they will want to handle it. But the New Breed is more effusive in their passion. They certainly use more exclamation marks. Not only in their lively, highly communicative emails — you can actually hear it when they talk.
Ben feels that one of the important differences about his generation of agents is their career paths. For example, he knew exactly what he wanted to do when he was just beginning college: he wanted to be a literary agent. Most of the older agents I have known started out wanting to be editors… or, if you dig even deeper into their psyches, writers.
As he sees it, in previous generations, agents tended to be former editors or editorial directors. Sometimes, they were fired from their jobs. Or, they had been promoted so high that they had become corporate managers, no longer involved in the day-to-day handling of books. One way they could get back to the basics – working directly on books, relating to individual authors – was to hang out their shingle as agents. According to Ben, the New Breed of agents are what he calls “born and bred agents.” They tend to start as assistants in literary agencies (or move over to agencing rather early in their careers) and stayed there, making their way up the ladder within that one branch of the industy. “You don’t necessarially have to have proven yourself in the publishing house for twenty years, and then move over to agenting when you’re 45. You’re moving over to agenting when you’re in your twenties. You start as an assistant and then move up, and there’s a different kind of energy involved. You don’t have old school editors becoming agents now. You have these people who are seeing things differently because they weren’t always in a house or never in a house. And I think it’s a different mindset with a different style.”
One thing that hasn’t changed is that, even in this Internet age, a lot of publishing business still requires face-to-face personal connections and networking. “Let’s do lunch” is as important a phrase as ever, and how often such invitations are accepted can be an indication of just how successful and repected you are. Some agents may make as many as three lunch appointments a week, though just as often, a date will be cancelled, because one or the other person suddenly has other obligations or crises to handle.
“But you know what is done over lunch?” Ben confided. “It’s relationship building. I work so well with editors who I have a relationship with, and they know my sensibilities and I know theirs. And they trust my instincts and I trust theirs. We just generally enjoy each other’s company, which makes for better business dealings. While to a certain extent you have to keep the personal and the professional separate, the personal is professional, and the professional is personal.”
In other words, publishing is still a small village. And, as in any such community, the young generation is doing its best to flex its muscles. It will be interesting to see how they mold the industry, and what effect they will have on what we will be reading (and writing).