This morning, I slept late enough to roll out of bed with purpose, shower quickly, and turn on the coffeemaker in the kitchen before delving into some last-minute copyediting. The picture window over my kitchen sink looks out at a steep hillside, where butterflies, hummingbirds, groundhogs, deer, dragonflies, squirrels, spiders, moths, raccoons, snakes, and the neighbor’s cats pass by all day and night. I started to calculate how many buckets of earth still needed to be removed to prepare the foundation of the tiny patio I’m installing this summer. From the corner of my eye, I saw a Carolina wren huddled near the steps leading up to the excavation. The little brown bird didn’t fly away. It didn’t even move when I peered out at it.

Deep in a container of Cape Primrose hanging beside the front door of the house, a wren had built a nest sheltered under the eaves. I thought the mother bird might be the injured one, unable to return to her nest.

From the laundry room, I could see the unmoving wren from another angle. Its feathers were ruffled. It was trying to look as intimidating as possible, because it couldn’t fly and was vulnerable on the hill. My watching made it skittish, so it spread its wings against the flagstone and moved itself on sprawling, nearly useless legs until it was out of my sightline.

I called David, poured some milk in my coffee, pulled on a jacket, and hurried around to the back of the house before the cats decided to blog about it.

The wren collected itself and wobbled bravely under the potting bench, which seemed to be an even more dangerous predicament. I set to pulling weeds while I waited for David to come down the hill, hoping the cats would stay away from me long enough for the bird to recover and fly away.

When David arrived, carrying a wicker picnic basket, he moved the bench and scooped up the injured bird with my gardening gloves. The feeble little wren panicked and screamed. David put it in the picnic basket, closed the lid, and carried the basket to the front porch. We could see the nesting wren, still quietly protecting its eggs in the flowers under the roof, and were glad it was safe.

Helplessly, another wren landed on a maple branch near the picnic basket and cried out, its breast throbbing violently. We didn’t know what to do to save the injured one.

On Independence Day, Joy Gough had told us that birds whose legs won’t work right are the ones that die. We had talked about hanging light catchers in the window and discussed which types worked best. Three stained glass ornaments were tucked away in a drawer. I didn’t hang them in the kitchen window after I moved to this house, because I liked the unobstructed view of my hill.

When I was two years old, according to family legend, I memorized this Mother Goose nursery rhyme:

Once I saw a little bird
Come hop, hop, hop
So I cried, “Little bird,
Will you stop, stop, stop?”
And was going to the window
To say, “How do you do?”
But he shook his little tail,
And far away he flew.

We failed to save the wren.

I hung the light catchers in the picture window.

Peter Jurmu, Internet marketing maestro at Creative Byline, introduced himself in 2008 after I blogged about online manuscript submission services. Later, thanks to Peter, I had the opportunity to meet his employer, Brad MacLean, at BookExpo America. Both men impressed me with their candor, sincerity, and resourcefulness.

Creative Byline has been rather quietly tackling the slushpile for a growing list of book publishers. Writers pay a nominal fee for each manuscript submitted to the service, and a reviewer ensures that the written work meets the site’s quality standards. Publishers subscribe to Creative Byline to gain access to a manuscript database that has been filtered, is searchable by keywords, and includes the submitting authors’ biographical information.

I had a few questions, and Peter was happy to answer them.

—Robin

Guest blogger:
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Peter Jurmu, Creative Byline

When Robin invited me to guest blog, she expressed an interest in how Creative Byline addresses the traditional concerns about “agencies” that charge fees for any aspect of their services before they sell a manuscript. She surmised (correctly) that people simply don’t think of Creative Byline as an agency. I’d like to elaborate on what Creative Byline is and our plans for what’s next in this changing industry.

Our focus has always been connecting writers with editors at reputable publishers. When writers upload and submit via Creative Byline, they receive feedback from our first readers on whether and how well their manuscripts meet general editorial standards. Writers are on their own to revise, but one unanimous opinion among members we’ve surveyed is that our first readers’ approval increases writers’ credibility among editors.

When writers receive that approval for submission to an editor via Creative Byline, they also receive a list of editors appropriate to their manuscripts. (A master list of editors at our publishing clients is also searchable.) While writers and/or editors frequently update us on the progress of a given ms, we only make the connection between the two parties—we don’t monitor communication.

The technology presently changing publishing makes our role as conveyer-not-advocate possible and creates an environment in which writers can find editors who want a particular kind of manuscript now. Whereas the mode of submission for many trade publishers remains hard copy, we also provide a way for writers to electronically submit mss, and editors to receive these submissions, without any of the time-waste or tedium associated with printing, mailing, storing, and lugging around manuscripts.

Since the needs of writers and editors continue to change, we asked our members how we can better serve them. Two new features sprang directly from these conversations and will debut this summer.

First, writers will be able to choose the feedback they receive from our first readers. Writers will have the option of, for example, submitting larger portions of their manuscripts to our first readers for feedback. Second, writers will be able to include samples of self-published and journalistic work (online and off) to provide the editors who see their work a more complete overview of their capabilities and experience. Since our service already helps writers gain visibility among editors, these additional work samples will flesh out a profile into something nearer a professional portfolio.

Creative Byline has for the past eighteen months been carving out its niche as a company that simplifies the submission process. Changing the way books are acquired and published is a natural part of this evolving market, and new tech and methods such as ours can and do focus communications between all parties with interests in publishing a manuscript.

Peter Jurmu will begin Emerson College’s MFA program in fall 2009. He has interned at Creative Byline since August 2008, when Brad MacLean saved him from turning the crank on a chain ferry in Saugatuck, Michigan. Follow Peter @lemnisk on Twitter.

This week, I accompanied Mr. Misdiagnosed & Admitted to his favorite writers’ conference, a congenial gathering of eminent, established, emerging, and aspiring formalist poets. The Poetry Conference at West Chester University of Pennsylvania is currently in its fifteenth year and seems appropriately vigorous for its age. At Books, Inq., Frank Wilson, Melissa Balmain, and Carrie Keesey are blogging about selected sessions, for those who can’t be present.

The conference schedule includes evening events that are free and open to the public. Books by conference faculty are available in the campus bookstore. At the registration desk, browsers are lured by a display of fine limited editions printed and bound on the university campus. Tempted by Moira Egan’s The Silk of the Tie (in its irreverent pink cover), David Yezzi’s Sad Is Eros, and Dick Davis’s translation of medieval Persian poet Fakhraddin Gorgani’s Vis and Ramin, my money and I were soon parted.

The opening of the conference on Wednesday was celebrated with a reading by former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall. It was a pleasure to be part of an audience attuned to the collective shudder at the poet’s quiet observation: “Your peonies lean their vast heads westward / as if they might topple. Some topple.” (See the full text.)

Michael Peich, conference cofounder and director of the four-day event, surprised me with an invitation to his early morning demonstration of letterpress printing. A group of us trailed across the campus in the muggy calm, and Peich ushered us into the Aralia Press, housed in the new library at West Chester. We were joined by Donald Hall, who seemed delighted to sign for each of us Peich’s elegant, hand-colored broadside of the poem “Nymph and Shepherd.”

Peich, an admitted fanatic with a passion for rare types and the gorgeous imprecision of the typesetter’s art, explained the intuitive process of designing the broadside. Listening, we were as happy as a group of schoolchildren at story time. My photographs of Peich’s demonstration at Aralia Press can be found on Flickr.

Later in the morning, Mr. Misdiagnosed & Admitted conducted a workshop on preparing poetry manuscripts for submission. When asked to discuss the effect of typesetting on a poet’s work, he replied:

If a woman wearing a new dress walks into the room, do you say, “That’s a beautiful dress”?

If so, you miss the point. The proper response is “You look gorgeous.”

You could call it poetry immersion learning.

A couple of days ago, I was prompted to update my browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, to version 8. The next time I viewed my blog, the default Kubrick theme was no longer displaying as it should. It took a while before I could find any discussion of the problem online. Now, it appears as though people think it will take a while for WordPress to attempt to modify Kubrick to comply with IE8. So, for the time being, the blog will look strange. If Kubrick and IE8 decide to play together, then I’ll work on the bugs in the custom header. Going back to the drawing board is now a regular occurrence. Getting frustrated about it would be pointless.

Sharon Miller Cindrich, a columnist for Plugged In Parent and the Writer Mama e-newsletter, and author of E-Parenting: Keeping Up with Your Tech-Savvy Kids, interviewed me for one of the cover articles in the July 2009 issue of The Writer. “Recession Tips: Timely advice from agents” offers practical suggestions from six literary agents, including the versatile CEO of FinePrint Literary Management, Peter Rubie, and the cool and elegant Rita Rosenkranz, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at BEA last month.

The new issue of the magazine focuses on recommendations for writers who are trying to resist ever-present economic pressures in a rapidly changing marketplace. Copywriter Robert W. Bly contributes his tips on what crucial information to include in a writer’s website. For constructive encouragement, this might be a good publication to consult.

An important part of my job as an agent involves staying on top of the changes in book publishing, including publicity, marketing, and electronic formats. Frankly, I appreciate the current flux that’s sending everyone back to the research and development stages. It’s good to be starting out in the business at a time like this. I have a background in R&D, but I’d overlooked the fact that R&D would need to be continuous for the foreseeable future. The discussions coming through my RSS feed yesterday clued me in.

I laughed out loud when I read the title of David Rothman’s blogpost: “Could Google Editions kill off the traditional e-book? Books in the ‘clouds’” Uh, traditional ebooks? Before any single ebook format or reading device truly managed to dominate the market and earn the designation traditional, Google announced that by the end of 2009 it will launch a new service that will permit readers to purchase and download ebooks that can be cached in a browser and stored in the cloud, according to the New York Times. Perhaps transitional is a more accurate term for the currently available ebook formats. And maybe six months from now, I’ll be a traditional authors’ representative.

On Yen Cheong’s Book Publicity Blog, I glanced through a discussion of the distinctions between the old and new waves of book bloggers. Just when I thought the Internet was the great leveler, people are seriously forming into camps all over again. Fortunately, Edward Champion’s rap saved me from despair. Scroll down to comment #20 and check it out.

I couldn’t take any of the new world order too seriously yesterday, and neither did some pranksters who found their old friend’s status update too profound for Facebook. When she announced that she was “writing about June 4 and Green Forest, Arkansas…” a snarky commenter quickly added, “And the bloody insurrection there when Sonic tried to change from crunchy to cubed ice?” Another wimpered, “I’ve been dealing with those memories for years.” Surely the comments stretch to forty or more today. Because Facebook status updates display only so many characters in certain views, the writer’s full sentiment—“writing about June 4 and Green Forest, Arkansas, when I heard about Tiananmen Square”—wasn’t visible to the readers who tacked on their quips.

By the time I landed at O’Betty’s for a bite to eat last night, I was thoroughly amused and baffled by everyone who seemed to be missing, or ignoring, the backstory.

Mr. Misdiagnosed & Admitted told me that some friends had taken their mop-headed four-year-old son to have lunch at O’Betty’s a few weeks ago. Looking around at the memorabilia on the walls, the little boy, taking it all very seriously, observed, “Look! Princesses eat here.”

I’m just saying…

Today, my visit to the New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan occurred serendipitously at the very moment a building tour was being conducted by docent Julie North Chelminski. As I snapped pictures with my iPhone, she enthralled a large group of visitors with her rapid-fire history of the century-old library and its riches.

I was surprised when our tour guide explained that an important early donation to the library, the Berg Collection, included the private holdings of the president of the American Book Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. The American Book Company published the popular old textbooks known as McGuffey Readers.

Another private collection that was contributed to help establish the library included the first Gutenberg Bible brought to North America. The institution’s special collections include fascinating items such as the original typescript of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Now housing seven million books, the library is as much a museum as a place for research.
I would have loved to request a book from the stacks, but it was sufficiently enjoyable to wander through the rooms and appreciate the architectural detail. I can contact a NYPL reference librarian from anywhere in the world by phone or email, if I have a question.
Mr. Misdiagnosed & Admitted wondered just how much fun a NYPL branch book sale might be. He promised to accompany me to New York for BookExpo America in 2010. Here’s hoping the book industry trade show and the library still exist for our benefit a year from now.

I’m starting to receive email from writers who pitched their ideas to me at the BEA/Writer’s Digest Books Writers Conference that preceded BookExpo America in New York last week. I realize it’s difficult to wait for a reply. I’ll be able to go through all of the email and begin responding a little later this week. I heard several terrific pitches, and I hope the concepts hold together on the page.

Until I began talking to writers at the conference last Wednesday, I hadn’t thought about the primary benefit to the aspiring authors who participated in the Pitch Slam. Each person can send a query to any of the agents any day, but only at the writers’ conference do they have the perfect opportunity to judge the variety of agents up close. The writers shouldn’t have been worried about the impressions they made. It was actually their turn to assess the literary agents and find out whether they would be compatible as collaborators.

The nonstop networking and events of BEA began the day after the writers’ conference. This year, I was pleased to note there were many more innovators eager to invest their energy in the book publishing industry. Their idealism was refreshing and encouraging. I tend to identify change agents online, so BEA was my opportunity to meet many of them in person and learn who they’re watching for new ideas.

Mike Shatzkin of IdeaLogical gave a brilliant talk on the future of the industry. The full text of his presentation is expected to be posted on his blog. He urged publishers to take the time to search the Web for customers and collaborators in their niches, as well as measuring and tracking financial results by verticals. Shatzkin also admonished book publishers to form alliances that will enable new businesses based on community, by giving the communities something of value. He pointed out that each publisher will find business in multiple niches but needs to address each niche separately. The practice is labor-intensive, which will make it difficult for the largest general trade publishers to adopt. Repeatedly during BookExpo it was emphasized that smaller, more agile publishers will gain an advantage during this period of transition to digital workflow and in the process of learning to engage with the communities that form around a book, an author, or a special interest.

BookExpo America always renews my interest in the ways publishers are marketing and publicizing their books. Simon & Schuster has a new user interface designed for booksellers, librarians, and book reviewers who won’t be attending BEA but would like to request advance reading copies (ARCs) of forthcoming titles at no charge while supplies last. The invitation to the Atria Books Galley Grab comes from Judith Curr, Atria’s executive vice president and publisher. It’s a terrific idea, because the website is so easy to use. The Galley Grab also introduces Atria’s publicists to new contacts who can help with promotion, as bookstore employees, librarians, and book critics in all media opt in through the Web interface. If the reviewers register to receive galleys, maybe they’ll also begin a productive dialogue with Atria.

I’m looking forward to the reviews of God Sleeps in Rwanda. Fifteen additional titles are included in the Atria Books Galley Grab while supplies last.

Lately, I’ve been acutely aware of how people respond publicly to criticism. In particular, individuals who acquire leadership roles, attract notoriety or admiration, or champion innovation can’t avoid the attention of skeptics, who seem to show up late and disgruntled. Hazing is so predictable that it must serve a healthy purpose, which I’ve been haphazardly trying to pinpoint.

Criticism silences some people, makes fools of others, and somehow strengthens a third group. The phenomenon is probably what we enjoy most about reality shows, competitive events, political analysis, and debates on popular blogs. We watch to see who handles criticism graciously and who becomes unreasonably defensive. We applaud the confident comeback, and we shake our heads when ego overrides common sense.

Back in the ‘90s, when crafting mission and values statements was all the rage, I succeeded in having the token “willing to change in response to valid criticism” inserted in my organization’s operating principles. I can’t take credit for the word valid. Someone else suggested the modifier, because criticism that isn’t considered valid is simply annoying. No one really values going whichever way the wind blows, though plenty of people do it.

After very little serious contemplation of the function of criticism, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that it’s a necessary obstacle in any person’s path to success. It functions as a gate because of the variety of responses it evokes.

Fear of criticism can completely halt an individual’s progress. It makes some people afraid to try. There wouldn’t be much fear of failure if it weren’t accompanied by criticism, either spoken or implied. The exception, of course, is the fear of failure with the risktaker’s death as a proximate result, assuming he or she wouldn’t care much about the critics after that.

Irrational or inelegant responses to criticism attract more faultfinding. Overreaction exposes individuals’ insecurities and sometimes drives them to avoid further vulnerability.

Openness to criticism—the ability to learn from it and remain undaunted—allows a relatively small number of people to succeed at competitive endeavors. We admire individuals who handle disparaging remarks with aplomb, and we can also learn from them. Grace under pressure is one of the easiest traits to mimic, because we elevate those who provide us with the finest examples of it.

Yes, you already know the easiest way to avoid criticism.