Episode 25: Ghostwriting

In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, author David Moldawer discusses ghostwriting with Elisabeth Egan of the New York Times Book Review.

David Moldawer is a bestselling book collaborator specializing in business, personal development, and other practical nonfiction. Before his freelance career, he was an editor at book publishers including St. Martin's Press, McGraw-Hill, and Portfolio. 

Elisabeth Egan is a writer at the New York Times Book Review and the author of A Window Opens.

Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.

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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell and Bree Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kellenyi and Derek Mattheiss.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.

Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.

Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room!

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Transcript

Kathryn: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Watchung Bookseller's Podcast, where we bring you conversations from our bookstore's rich community of book professionals who talk about different aspects of the book world. If you're new to our podcast, thanks for joining us.

Kathryn: I'm Kathryn and I'm here with , Marni. Hey Marni, hi. 

Kathryn: What are you reading these days? 

Marni: I just got a copy of The Message by Ta Nehisi Coates. It's his newest book. It's non fiction. I'm really looking forward to reading it. How about you? 

Kathryn: Yeah, making the news.

Kathryn: well, I'm actually just going to plug one of our book clubs. At the kids room, there's a YA book club that's hosted by our bookseller, Aubrey, who is just really, um, a YA enthusiast and so smart and really dedicated to finding great books for young readers. And, , this month they are reading The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.

Kathryn: You can join the book club and it's 25, but that buys you the book and, , an evening after hours at the bookstore and, , some pizza. So send your kids along.

Marni: Yeah, that sounds great. , so today's episode is about ghostwriting, and it's something, um, most people don't know much about. We certainly didn't until we listened to this episode. And it's with, , Liz Egan and a friend and neighbor to the store, David Moldower. 

Kathryn: David Moldower is a best selling book collaborator specializing in business, personal development, and other practical nonfiction.

Kathryn: Before his freelance career, he was an editor at book publishers including St. Martin's Press, McGraw Hill, and Portfolio. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife and two kids. 

Marni: And with him is Elizabeth Egan, a writer at the New York Times Book Review and the author of A Window Opens. Liz is also a dedicated customer and one of our favorite podcast guests.

Marni: and an honorary bookseller at Watchung Booksellers. 

Kathryn: Enjoy the conversation, and we'll be back afterwards to fill you in on what's coming up in the store.

Liz: Hi Dave, how are you? 

David: I'm good Liz. How are you? Good to see you again. 

Liz: Good to see you, too. Um, maybe we should begin by talking about how we know each other because I think we probably have a relationship that most people who are appearing on this podcast have not had with one another, which sounds a little strange, but would you like to explain our history?

David: Absolutely. I was working at a publishing company that had been created by Mr. Jeff Bezos himself, Amazon Publishing, New York. We were the New York branch. We caused a big stir in the New York media scene when we were founded and Not long after we got the thing off the ground, you were brought in as a, as an editor for, for fiction, and uh, we were office mates.

Liz: Not only were we office mates, I felt that you were a fellow passenger on a lifeboat that was slowly drifting away from the mothership. And we don't have to go into any tremendous detail in case Jeff Bezos himself is listening, but I will go on record as saying, and I believe I have gone on record saying this in the past, but it was Definitely not a high point in my career, and you were an absolute saving grace.

David: Oh, that's a nice, nice of you to say. Truly, 

Liz: I mean that. 

David: I've, I enjoyed, I mean, it wasn't a lot of fun, but I enjoyed the experience, I guess, as a learning opportunity. I've been an editor in book publishing. And book publishing has a way of operating. It has a culture and all of that had always felt strange to me because I wasn't raised in a literary household.

David: I wasn't from that background. And I thought, little did I know, but I thought that somehow Amazon would have brought together Sort of the best of startup culture and tech culture and the West Coast kind of entrepreneurial Silicon Valley thing with our literary taste and sensibilities and art, the arts, and we would have kind of the best of both worlds.

David: And it was so the worst of both worlds, but, but in that, that was a learning experience and just kind of seeing the flaws of both systems magnified and amplified and multiplied by each other. And it was great to have a. Kindred spirit, uh, in my office that we could, uh, in our office that we could, uh, complain about these things while I, uh, sat at my standing desk.

Liz: Because I 

David: didn't want to stand anymore. 

Liz: Once you started sitting at the standing desk, I knew, I knew your days were numbered. Yeah, that made me sad. But, um, what did you do after you left? Let's, let's walk from that point in your career to where you are now. 

David: Sure. So when, when Amazon publishing, you know, the writing was on the wall and I think the writing was on my wall, uh, there, um, there was a lot of sort of finger pointing.

David: We, we, you know, there are a number of problems and they're still there, but not, not in the form that we were in it. But, um, you know, when I saw that they were, um, kind of indicating that my time had come, I decided to, um, or actually someone reached out to me about a startup job. And it was an interesting point in my career because.

David: I'd left New York Publishing behind. And also, I don't know about made enemies, but that imprint made people really angry. I had people complain about it to my face, not knowing I worked there. And, so this job was in a related area in the sense that I would be recruiting experts, the same kinds of people I worked with as an editor, uh, you know, and in a lot of cases, actual authors I'd worked as, uh, within as an editor.

David: As instructors on a learning platform. So if you're familiar with Skillshare, it was sort of like that. And so, and I would be finding projects and finding experts and kind of constructing this learning content. It felt a bit like being a book editor. So I said, I can't go back. I just, at least especially at that point, I could not go back to Penguin.

David: It was still Penguin at the time, I think. Go back to Penguin and do the thing of acquiring 10 books a year. And so I went off and I did Startup World, which also was a great learning experience. And, uh, and then at that point. I was really stuck. You know, even at Amazon I remember, and you probably had a similar experience, where when I, when I interviewed, I really thought I was in publishing.

David: And when I interviewed, the person who interviewed me at, at Amazon who was actually the Amazonian, she said she'd invented the Kindle. She'd been like leading the team on Kindle. I was like, wow, that's a big deal. What do you do now? And she was in like clothing. 

Liz: Yes. Yes. And I was, 

David: it was like a shock to me.

David: I was like, so let me get this straight. You're not really in books or book publishing. You're with Amazon and then you just do whatever. is just, you know, whatever opportunity looks good to you. 

Liz: You had to be nimble. 

David: You had to be nimble and you had to not have any attachment to the identity of being an editor or whatever.

David: And, uh, I was kind of thinking like, well, what am I now? Now that i'm doing this, this tech stuff, this learning platform, I don't want to be a product manager. I'm a book guy. And, uh, if I go from here to the next job, am I just going to go work at Facebook or something? It just didn't make any sense to me.

David: That wasn't my identity. And it was around that time that an author became an editor. It was actually the first author that I'd read in my category as a consumer. So when I was a teenager, I was a very disorganized kid. And I got really into things like dummies, guides, and you know, how do I figure out these life skills.

David: And, uh, Julie Morgenstern, who wrote this book, Organizing from the Inside Out, I think. And I read that book and I really, you know, and that got me started on like, Oh wow, you can learn things from books. Prescriptive non fiction. And so I met her to recruit her for the platform, And she asked me about help with writing.

David: With, uh, And, um, I was like, wow, this is interesting that there's, I didn't even, I wasn't saying this. I didn't say anything about it. It wasn't like I was pitching myself on the side. She just proposed that kind of thing. And I thought there must be some demand for that kind of support out there. So maybe as the next thing, I just give it a try.

David: And so when I left the startup, I put myself out there. At first in a very unfocused way, I just kind of emailed everyone in my, in my Rolodex, and said, Hey, you know, I know about books. It wasn't a great pitch. The fact that 

Liz: you just used the term, everyone in my Rolodex, 

David: in the 

Liz: same sentence as you're leaving a tech startup is an interesting, well, that's a sign.

David: It was time for me to go. I think I actually became more analog in response to that experience and being around all those, uh, Uh, Seattle and San Francisco tech people, but I put, I put that out there and got a few bites, helped with proposals and very quickly figured out that that's what was, that was where the demand was for what I could do.

David: No one wanted my help with marketing or any of the other things I could plausibly have helped with, but the proposal help that there was demand for. And once I started having success and things started selling. There was a degree of a momentum and here, here we are, you know, more than 10 years later, and I've done a lot of stuff and I've written books too.

David: So it's been book proposals and books, you know, for more than a decade now. 

Liz: So walk me through the process. I reach out to you through your website where you promised to get back to me within 24 hours, which I find impressive. Um, and as the Amazonians used to say, that surprised and delighted me when I, when I, And I reach out to you and I say, I would like to write a business book or a book on, on another subject.

Liz: Where do we go from there? 

David: So this is actually a really common thing and it's often not through the website. Usually it's through a literary agent. So the more typical path is that somebody builds up some sort of a platform, they go viral in some way or another with their podcast, or with a blog, or a YouTube channel, increasingly.

David: And, uh, somebody in their world says, you should write a book, the typical thing. And that's a good sign, I always tell people. Once someone comes to you and says you should write a book, that's when you start to pay attention. And they will find somebody through this little world, because everyone's connected.

David: Uh, in this world of, of advice, prescriptive non fiction, thought leadership, whatever you want to call it, personal development. And they'll find their way to me. And so at that point, I haven't touched that website since I started. Okay. It's a little bit out of date. The 24 hour thing. Oh, I thought it I didn't realize it was surprising and delightful.

Liz: I thought it was very user friendly. 

David: Um, yeah. So, so yeah, they'll just come directly and say, so and so told me to talk to you. And they don't know anything. That's the, the typical situation is they've never done it before. And they have no idea how to go about turning all their stuff, all their material about whatever it is, entrepreneurship or, uh, habits or name your, name your topic, uh, healing from trauma.

David: They have no idea how you go from that and having some sort of an audience to a proposal that you can then give to the agent. Cause the agents, especially in this category, the few agents who do most of the larger deals in this category, do not have. The interest or bandwidth. To work with you on, you know, cause it's months and months of, of effort.

David: They don't want to help you figure it out. They want you to come to them with something that they can sell. They don't have the time. Some of them do, but generally speaking, the ones who do a lot, they just, they just don't want to. And so they'll send them to me or to someone like me to get that support, develop the proposal, and that'll be, you know, that'll be the process.

David: That'll be the process. And then hopefully the thing sells. 

Liz: For people who don't know, what does a proposal consist of? Sure. 

David: So, I was an editor. Actually, I don't really 

Liz: know. You've seen a few. I have, but it's been a while. 

David: Yeah. So, uh, I was an editor for a long time, so that's where my knowledge comes from.

David: And what's interesting about it is, I've read various books and there are various, especially agents, will do books or online courses of how to write a proposal. And, you know, and also I've read older books from the heyday of publishing, there are all these kinds of rules, it includes this, it doesn't include that.

David: In reality, there is no right book proposal. When I was an editor, I got to see them and you would see that, you know, one agency would kind of have a format, but then another agency would do something completely different. And sometimes it would just be basically a letter, basically a couple of pages. Not saying that's good, but the point is, is that practically anything can be a proposal.

David: And, uh, just like with a business plan, you know, sometimes a business plan, you know, with Southwest Airlines, it was on a napkin famously, although that story is questionable, but that idea that you can really do anything as long as the other person says, I'll buy it. And all you're trying to do is convince first.

David: An editorial assistant or an intern because that's usually the first reader, uh, to say take a look at this one because the editor is inundated usually with projects and isn't going to pay attention unless someone highlights it and then they have to be convinced and then you have to take that document to the editorial board, which can consist of the publisher, the director of marketing, the director of publicity.

David: It could be 10 people. It can be 30 people. It can be very scary. It wasn't scary for us at Amazon because we were small, but when I was an editor at St. Martin's Press, for example, that editorial board meeting was a gigantic conference room table with a lot of people at it. And some of them were quite intimidating.

David: People from the sales department, you know, the guy who talks to Barnes Noble, you know, very, and they were the, you know, they were the ones who were really in charge. Um, they're the ones with power and, uh, and you have to go up there and the, you have You know, by the time you go up there as an editor, the document, you're already convinced, right?

David: Otherwise, you wouldn't be putting your neck on the line. The document has to give you ammunition. It's got to make the case for you. It's got to give you the language so that you can talk about the project in a way that gets people who are very, very skeptical excited about this project. So, uh, my proposal has the typical components to answer your questions.

David: So An overview, which is the summary, which is why you do it last. It's usually a few pages long and it basically says, here's who I am. Here's what the project is. That's super important because we're the editor. We'll usually read everything and do a lot of due diligence. The sales guy is going to just kind of page through the overview.

David: So all the good stuff's got to be in there. All the choice, little bits. Don't leave anything out and make sure it's right up top. It's like, you know, don't bury the lead. That's the lead. And then you're going to get into things like the, obviously the, what I call the chapter overview, which is the outline and which has to function in a certain way, and I can talk about any of these things in detail because I have to deal with them.

David: Uh, and then it's a sample chapter commonly, uh, because we want to see that you can execute. Because it's one thing to say, you know, this chapter, after you read this chapter, you'll never wonder how to lose weight again. And it's like, that sounds great. I'd love to sell a book that had a chapter that tells me how to never, you know, lose weight or make a million dollars in my business or whatever.

David: Can I see the chapter? Can I see a chapter from this amazing book? Because I've had that experience many times when I didn't get a sample chapter and I decided to roll the dice and you get the actual thing they promised. And it's just fluff. So the sample chapter, you can prove that there's at least meat on the bone.

David: on that particular part of the book and about the author. Who are you? Why are you such a big deal? What's your plan to market and promote the book? Those are kind of the primary components. There are occasionally other ones depending on who the author is, but as long as you tell me, you know, who you are, who you're writing the book for, what you're going to be doing for them, the value of the project.

David: And also I should add, I'm doing nonfiction and I'm doing prescriptive nonfiction, meaning it's like advice. And, you know, in fiction, you know, it's a different story. You know, for one thing, you usually get the whole manuscript almost always, right? You gotta see it. 

Liz: So as a writer, it's, it's a little. Easier because you can just make it up.

Liz: It doesn't have to be factual. But you do have to write the whole thing nine times out of ten in order to sell it. 

David: Absolutely, and I made the mistake once, I normally didn't do this, but there was one time when someone asked me to read, because they'll, as an editor, you ask other editors to read when you're at a big book signing.

David: Editorial Board Meeting so you have some verification. And I read a novel, but I didn't read the whole novel because I was a non fiction guy. I was used to reading proposals and I didn't have, I wasn't built to do the whole read a novel at night which fiction editors do all the time and I thought it was great I came in I was 100 percent give my thumbs up.

David: And then that night I said, I'm going to finish this. So good. I'm going to finish it. And it went right off a cliff in the final, you know, 30 pages or 50 pages, whatever chunk I didn't get to. And I remember thinking, Oh my God, if this, if this had been my book. And I've been so sloppy as to acquire this thing.

David: I don't know what I would have done, you know, it's like watching Lost, except, you know, it didn't stick the landing. So, so, and maybe it was fixable. I was just, it really taught me a lesson that a fiction editor's job is very different. It very different. It can't, it has to kind of come together with nonfiction.

David: You can always. You can always do something. You know what I mean? Like there's, most of these problems have been solved. We know how to start a business or lose weight or whatever, build habits, and you can fix it later. It might not be great, but it's not like there would just be nothing there. It's not like you just get to the end and you're like, Oh, there's no resolution on this plot.

David: So I learned that lesson pretty early. 

Liz: The hard way. 

David: Yeah. 

Liz: To what extent do you personally need to connect with or care about, or even, you know, be Believe in the material that a prospective client is bringing to you. 

David: You know I'm a little bit cynical. I do know that about you. I feel like we bonded over being a little bit cynical.

David: Definitely. It's 

Liz: hard not to be a little bit cynical in the publishing world. It's, it's easy to also be quite starry eyed and love books and reading and paper and the smell of it and, you know, that whole thing. But there is another side where you think, why are there so many books? 

David: 100%. And you, and also when you meet the authors, uh, or you find out the story behind a book and you become disillusioned when, you know, some book, uh, I'm not going to start throwing people under the bus, but when some book that's a famous, inspirational, you know, I say, I met this old mentor of mine and on a day of the week.

David: And you find out it was all just a cynical fiction 

Liz: that 

David: everyone knows was a cynical fiction, just totally manufactured nonsense. You start to, you start to step back and then you realize, well, gosh, the person who acquired that book did, did well. 

Liz: Right. 

David: So, and I had the experience also of working at an imprint.

David: prior to Amazon where I was doing business books like this, but I was also doing politics that weren't my politics. And I thought that was really interesting too, you know, and you get into that idea of, uh, this is a marketplace of, of ideas and we're just helping that person say what they That's our job.

David: It's not my job to editorialize, to put my opinion, I'm here to sort of transparently just make sure that they're able to communicate more effectively and I took that as my job as opposed to whether I agree with any of it. I'm in a position now as a ghostwriter where I can choose projects most of the time, and that's, that's really lucky.

David: That's really lucky. So, um, the stuff that I work on, if the advice isn't useful, I'm not interested. It can be, unoriginal, because it's all unoriginal. If you read a book, you know, just go back ten years, read the books from then, you'll say, Oh, it's the same things, that all are revolutionary now, it's the same things.

David: That doesn't bother me. But if it's, um, uh, if it doesn't work, if the advice is faulty, Uh, or, or if there is no advice there, it's just, uh, smoke and mirrors, then I don't, that's just going to be exhausting, you know, but as long as it's, as long as I can turn it into something that someone would find useful, every new generation is going to discover its version of Stephen Covey or, um, or whoever, and, uh, you know, They deserve to get it in their words by someone that they can relate to.

David: Cause otherwise it would just be everyone reading how to make friends and influence people over and over and over again, which is fine. It has the same stuff in it, but it's a little old fashioned. 

Liz: What does the author provide to you? So if it's not, if it's a subject that's not your area of expertise, are you actually doing the research or are they giving you studies, giving you ideas for, um, Quizzes to include, are they helping you, are they giving you a crash course in their area of expertise?

David: My advantage is that I'm very focused on this area of prescriptive nonfiction. There, it almost never happens that anybody says anything to me about human behavior or psychology or motivation or anything related to it that I haven't heard before. So if they don't have studies or don't have examples, I can pull them from somewhere.

David: Um, What I'm really getting when I talk to a client is their perspective on it, 

their 

David: tone or their voice, you know, whatever you want to call it, because there are many, many different books that will tell you how to achieve a goal. But, uh, there are so many. The advice might be the same, but there are so many different ways of talking about it, whether there's an emphasis on the spiritual, whether there's an emphasis on the psychological, the neurological, and so it's not a question of what we're trying to convince the reader to try, but how we're going to convince them, what kind of evidence we're going to use, you know, some authors, they'll only talk about a study. And of course, studies have been, most of these studies are not great in the social sciences. At best, not great. But that still gives it that, that patina of academic. But others will, will just throw out some Stoics, they'll throw out some philosophers, and that'll be their evidence.

David: I can't tell what kind of person you are until I talk to you about it, and then I, you very quickly get a sense of kind of the vibe. 

Liz: How do you get inside their, how do you adopt their voice? Like, how do your proposals not all sound like David Moldauer of Montclair, New Jersey? And by the way, why does it say on your website that you live outside of New York City?

Liz: You live in New Jersey. That's a topic for another day. Some could 

David: say that. 

Liz: Um, maybe, just own it. Just own it. I don't know if I'm going to own it. Exit 151. It's okay. 

David: I'm not going to. Sometime, in some places it does say, it does say, um, but especially internationally and with other people. No. Uh, they do attach strange meaning to it.

David: Of course they do. You know. Of 

Liz: course they do. I'm only teasing. 

David: Yeah. Sorry, New Jersey. 

Liz: Tell me how you, because you do have a strong voice as a writer. How do you reshape your voice to become someone else's? 

David: That's a good question. It's an ear thing. With a book proposal. Are you 

Liz: a musician? 

David: I played the clarinet in high school.

Liz: But do you think that helps, feeds in at all? No. Okay. 

David: No. No, it's reading. It's being a heavy reader. And, and so when I'm reading, and being an editor for a long time, uh, my ear is very finely tuned. So when I read a sentence that just doesn't sound, in other words, I pretend I'm the reader of that person's book.

David: Cause I know that person, I know their brand, I know, you know, and often they're, you know, Influencers are somebody that you already know. So they already have a kind of a public presence. So if I can't imagine, , pick your influencer writing that, because remember that 90 percent of the time, I mean, no offense, but like most of these blogs and all this content you see generated, that's already being written by somebody else.

David: So God knows what the voice of many of these public thought leaders actually is on their own. If you had them write something, I mean, I see their emails. But generally, many of them do not have a writing voice. I get a lot of people who have sort of attention deficit things and really don't like writing at all, beyond the occasional text.

David: Several times I've had people communicate with video to me. Meaning, there's a tool called Loom where you basically record yourself talking into the camera, uh, and then send that as a message, or people will do like a voice text, like these are people who don't like to write, they're hiring a writer. So there is no voice, uh, in that sense, when you talk about how you construct a paragraph.

David: They haven't constructed a paragraph since high school, uh, in some cases. So, They already have a manufactured voice. It's really more about not doing something that is distinctively mine. It's more of an absence of style because really what we're here to do is say, here's what I think you should do. Do this.

David: Did you, you know, did you know that? And then some study, then some example. So it's a, it's a transparency of,

Liz: I don't know why I'm thinking about, um, a personal shopper. Like, where you, I've always wanted to do that thing where you go stand in a dressing room and people just outfit you. 

David: I want to do that. There's, 

Liz: I know, make my life so much easier. But there's a parallel, I think, between being a ghostwriter and being a personal shopper.

Liz: Because the personal shopper isn't dressing this, every person in the same outfit. They're tailoring the style to the, to the human being who's in the dressing room. I hope you take that as a compliment. No, no, absolutely, a hundred percent. And 

David: it's, and it's very accurate. That is very accurate. I am, sometimes I'm working with somebody who has a distinct presence, but very often I'm working with someone, like I said, who is an expert and has mounds and mounds of whatever it is that they do.

David: Let's say LinkedIn posts. And, uh, or a newsletter, whatever their thing is, they've got so many things out there that you could draw a circle around any of it and get a different persona. And that's what a book is really doing. It's presenting a crystallized version. And I'm, I will basically invent a look for them.

David: I'll be like, you know, this, let's make this aggressive, 

you know? 

David: And you look at, you know, when I say aggressive, I mean lean in, for example, you know, lean in is aggressive. Right? It's literally in the title of the book, be, be aggressive. Lean in. And that's a choice. And that's not for everybody.

David: Uh, some, some books take a much more, you know, gentle approach, you know. And you have to make a choice. You have to make a decision because, you know, what they say about books, especially these kinds of books, is, you know, they, you could be talking about, about this book for ten years. If the book is successful, it could be more than 10 years.

David: Tim Ferriss still is sort of the 4 hour brand, 4 hour work week. Uh, and that was a title that was picked out of Google AdWords. It wasn't even important to him and certainly not a person who's ever worked 4 hours in his life. It's more like 400 hours in a week. And, uh, Uh, and so you have to really, really play the tape forward and think about, do I want to be, you know, this at every conference, every speech when I go to companies, you know, cause they do consulting, they do speaking, they do training.

David: This could potentially end up being your brand. And so is this something you feel comfortable with? It's not always going to be stuck on you like that, but I've seen it happen over and over again. So I will present like a personal shopper. I'll say, okay, let's, let's go with this. Let's, you can be this person and you're, you're going to be kind of aggressive or you're going to be, um, the whisperer.

David: You're going to be the CEO whisperer and you're going to be the one, you know, and, and it's a, it's a persona. And maybe I say it because I see it in them, but sometimes I'm kind of manufacturing it, because I think it'll be appealing to editors. Because I put myself in the seat that we used to be in 

and be 

David: like, who would I want, if they walked in the door and I saw their background on the resume there, um, and they worked here and they had this audience, like who would I most want them to be?

David: Who would delight me if they walked in the door, you know, wearing a cowboy hat, you know, like, ah. How 

Liz: much are you playing the tape forward for yourself as a writer where, so if all goes according to plan, the agent accepts the proposal. The proposal goes out to editors. It is sold as a book. And then are you the person, I'm assuming if they've had a good experience with you, they want you to write the book.

Liz: Do you play it forward? Like, do you want to write the book or do you really just want to 

David: I, I want to write the book if I think the book will sell. achieve a certain level of success and if the bandwidth works out. So I do a lot of proposals and then they sell at an unpredictable pace and they take different amounts of time.

David: So when that particular proposal, I just had a proposal sell, it was great, went for a seven figure advance. It's something that I would normally have liked to work on but I'm in the middle of the last seven figure advance book. And so that's going to have to go to one of my Um, unfortunately, but that would be the kind that's like, this is a, cause I know the publisher's heavily invested if they put that kind of advanced toward it.

David: I know that it has the potential to be a breakout hit that then becomes inside the industry associated with my work. Um, and then I, and then of course, obviously the chemistry. with the author because sometimes it's a very easy collaborative process. Sometimes it's a bit of a grind and I'd like to say I only go with the ones that are an easy process.

David: I don't always. Sometimes it's just too appealing, like the potential of success because as an editor, I would have wanted to acquire it. And my thinking was the same. I acquired books, not necessarily because I liked the author, but because I thought the book had a chance of really doing well. 

Liz: But to write the book is even more difficult.

Liz: I mean, there's a much bigger commitment than editing the book. So you really have to be, be willing to walk in that person's shoes to belabor the fashion analogy. I mean, that's, that's a lot of time. 

David: It's a lot of time and it's, it's also the, uh, the feeling of it. The feeling of the collaboration. And, uh, you know, I'm on my seventh or eighth.

David: And dozens of proposals. Dozens and dozens. And also edits and things like that. But on the books, I've really gotten better and better at figuring out what I like about certain collaborations and what I really don't like about certain collaborations. And when you sit with a project for a year or more, Having that feeling all the time like there's always going to be some level of anxiety and what am I doing?

David: Is this are we on track? But sometimes it's more intense and the obviously the author's personality is a huge part of that, you know, whether they are Supportive like this is great. We're really even if they're a pain no offense, you know who I'm talking about even if they're a pain It, if it's got that, that sort of feeling of joyful, , collaboration where it's like, yes, this sucks, but we're in it together.

David: I can handle that. When it becomes. More antagonistic. Why isn't this working? No, I guess I guess I would say it when there's a lack of trust 

Mm 

David: hmm. Didn't I just sell your book for a million bucks? Like maybe just relax, but when it becomes antagonistic in that sense Creativity requires a lot of trust and you have to be free to go down certain pathways and to say let's try this What do you think of this iteration?

David: And when someone says like well, I don't like that We can't go anywhere from there. No. What about it? What, what do you need to change? What do you want to add? Um, and, unfortunately, some people just don't know how to be creative. They might be brilliant at their area of expertise, but 

David: you're working with other people who disagree with you and you have to make something together. And if you've never done that before, and you've always, if you've always been a kind of a solo operator, you don't have that muscle. And hopefully we can build it. Right. 

Liz: But some of the people you're dealing with, I know you probably can't name names, but they're titans of industry.

Liz: They are, you know, the loudest voice in every room they're in. And they're probably not accustomed to the level of, you know, of collaboration and let's face it, humility that it takes to have somebody, I mean, from where I'm sitting, it'd be so great to have somebody else write your book for you or write your proposal for you.

Liz: But I'm sure, yeah, it requires some dropping of the reins and saying, I trust you. My name is going to be on the cover of this book, which is a subject I want to get into. How you're credited usually, how you prefer to be credited. 

David: The funny thing is it's unpredictable because I have had billionaire clients.

David: I have had clients who are in my economic. And, uh, you really never know who's going to have an ego problem or a humility problem or whatever you want to call it. And it's really a trust thing. And I, I find that, you know, I'm, I'm bluntly honest. I know. I don't want it. I 

Liz: know that about 

David: you. But I also, I don't want it, you know, when they, when they come to me and we have that initial conversation, um, I'm not in sales mode.

David: I'm in editor mode. I take the exact same approach that I would as an editor where as an editor, you're trying to disprove the thesis because you're only having the conversation. As I tell them, you know, when it comes to a proposal, what the editor sees is an email from an agent and it says, Basically everything you need to know right in the first paragraph.

David: It says, so and so who has this many followers has a book on X. And that's the thesis. Cause if it is that, that you want that. That sounds amazing. I'll give you all the money in the world. And then second paragraph, third paragraph, as you keep going, that number goes down because it's, it either holds to that promise or most, in most cases it doesn't.

David: It's like, well, I wish it was that, but you actually, the outline doesn't reflect that, or I wish it was that, but the writing is not up to. So you just start losing that enthusiasm. So as an editor, I'm going in there like a prosecutor. To probe and to say, what are you leaving out? And what am I not seeing about this?

David: And you know, where's the, the bug in the, in the pie or whatever your metaphor is. And so I do the same thing as a, prospective ghostwriter, because I don't want to end up on a project where there's nothing there, which I have many times, where there's literally no book. People don't realize it. Uh, I'll give you a hint if any, or a clue.

David: If someone says they have eight books to write and they don't know which one to write first. They have zero books to write. 

Liz: That's so interesting. That doesn't surprise me. 

David: Never fails me because they don't understand what a book is. Right. 

Liz: It's very hard to spin one viral tweet into a book.

David: And yet they would think there are eight books in it. And it's not just, it's not enough to just have topics or stories. Um, and we can get into that. But the point being that I am really grilling them and I find that people who are genuinely self. Genuinely successful business people, they really, really appreciate that because that is their approach when they're looking at an investment or a business and they know that if I wasn't confident in my abilities, I wouldn't be pressing them like that.

David: I'd be trying to get their business. So they're the ones who actually tend to relax the most when I start trying to tear their book to pieces. But other people don't respond that way at all and it's not a good fit. But, um, Yeah, ironically the people who have no business having a lack of humility.

Liz: Tell me about, um, I feel like even In the years since we shared an office, the whole idea of what a sturdy platform is has really changed. I think we've hit peak social media. It used to be that if you had a certain number of followers on whatever platform, um, That could get you at least through the door for a certain conversation with a publisher.

Liz: Is that still the case? Like, what is the most valuable thing for a non fiction author to bring to a proposal? Yes. 

David: Gosh, we could do a whole, I have eight books to write about platform, but I'll, I'll try to keep this brief and targeted towards the people who might be listening. There's two things. There's two platforms.

David: And when we say platform, we basically mean, uh, the way I describe it to clients that I'm talking to, let's say you had this brilliant insight. You know, like Tim Ferriss at the end of his podcast used to say, um, you know, if you had a billboard you could put up and everyone could see, you know, what would be on the billboard.

David: So let's say you had this great insight or a life changing experience and you write an essay, you write a blog post. How many people could you get to look at this thing for free right now? Today? What buttons could you press? Right? So that makes it very concrete because you start thinking, okay, if I really was going to pull in all the chips, so this is not just a blog post, right?

David: Because you're not going to throw all your chips at a tweet or a blog post. But if this was really important, you know, you had a life shattering diagnosis and you just had like some insights about life and you, something where you just wanted to make it go as far as possible, then you start thinking, okay, who do I know?

David: And I would ask each and every one of them to spread this, knowing that I'm using a chip, knowing that I'm using up a favor. Uh, and of course your social media and also if you have a newsletter. So all the different things that you could possibly do to get more eyeballs on that thing. And then of course the actual book sales would be a teeny fraction of that because reading a free blog post is the lowest barrier to entry.

David: How do you get them to buy a 25 So when you think about platform, there is what the editors see, and that goes in the book proposal. And then there's the reality of what sells books. I'd like to say the alignment is better to be nice to my colleagues and that they've gotten a bit smarter.

David: When I was an editor, I was very tech savvy relative to my peers. And Paying attention to these things. So many editors were just naive or didn't understand or didn't use social media. And so they would get very impressed by things that didn't work, um, or have sort of misguided ideas about what turns into book sales.

David: And of course that can be manipulated. You know, people buying Twitter followers was very common, especially at first. You would get bots and you'd buy 50, 000 Twitter followers and, and then the editor would look and say, they've got 50, 000 Twitter followers. But if you actually looked. At the followers, you'd see, Oh, these are not, this is not real.

David: You can tell they're 

Liz: not interacting. There's so many little 

David: clues. And of course the fakers have gotten better at faking it. But the point being that we were really bad as an industry at interpreting. The platform section in a way that would lead to, like, this person is going to be worth a lot and this person is not going to be worth a lot.

David: I think they're better at it, but the problem is they're so desperate now because of the collapse of the industry to fewer and fewer publishing houses, and because there's no mid list, so they're not looking for books that are going to do okay. They're only looking for books that could be huge. And as a result, you get these gigantic auctions.

David: Even, even though none of the numbers really support it because it's like that this week that was like the one book that came in that had decent numbers so everyone goes crazy at the same six houses. Um, so one way or the other we're still overpaying. But, uh, the other thing is what actually sells books.

David: So if you're going to talk about what goes in the proposal, you put everything and you prioritize it by, uh, people who are actively invested in you. So, uh, Uh, a newsletter or a substack is going to be worth more than a Facebook follower, you know? Um, that's just logic. And you're going to put everything in there because it creates, including your followers on X or whatever other metrics, because things like numbers are convincing and they give you an air of authority, but it's a lot more presentational than based on any strategy.

David: In terms of actual, like how did that book become a success? That's a totally different question. And I know a lot of the people in that world, and they're not worried about what looks good. They're worried about what actually translates into book sales. And it's an arcane art that is constantly changing.

David: And anyone who is inactively involved in it who pretends to know about it, I'm very skeptical. Because every time I talk to the real operators in June of whatever, and they say, it's this, this and this. And you have to put videos on this platform. And then you have to repost them to this platform at three in the morning, you know, And I talked to them in September of the same year, Oh, no one does that anymore.

David: Oh, that, , that petered out, so they're like, they're doing surgery, you know, they're really understanding because they have the data, they're looking and they can see where the sales are coming from. And uh, and so everyone else, the author, authors who haven't just done a book, the editors, we're all just guessing and it's all like, you know, Oh, they've got so many and also people lie.

David: Like, I don't know how many newsletter followers you can say you have a million. I don't know. And you can do due diligence. You can, like I said, we just, we're talking on Twitter, like how many people are writing back and are those real accounts? But the fakers, like if you're going to fake, you're going to be so much more sophisticated.

David: You know, it's like the big short or whatever, where you see like the SEC people and they're just like totally out of their league. You're not going to spot the ones who are really going to an effort to fool you. Um, but in terms of what actually, actually, actually gets books to move, if you're at this level.

David: If you're at this level that you're getting big advances and you're a thought leader and you're trying to build your business around it, you're going to pull every trick in the book and you're also going to buy a lot of your own copies in a lot of cases and artificially get your way onto the New York Times bestseller list or try.

David: With a dagger. 

Liz: With a dagger. 

David: Sometimes unless they don't catch you. Let's not 

Liz: forget, they usually. 

David: You never know, right? How do you know? How do you know if they catch you or not? They try. 

Liz: Yeah. 

David: And um, but we had at Amazon, I thought, one of the things I thought Amazon would bring to the table would be data.

David: And I'd be like, well, you guys can see where the, right? But number one, no. And number two, if you push them, they'd say, well, learn MySQL database programming, and then you can pull it. And I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm an editor. I want you to send me a data person, but that's not their approach. So we never got good data.

David: However, I do remember many times, for example, uh, so and so has a million Twitter followers and that was a while ago, so it was even more, , unusual and they're going to tweet about the book. And then you'd sit there and look at the actual Amazon sales, and we weren't in stores, like any sale would have been Amazon, um, and nothing.

David: And that's a wake up call. Right. When you see a million Twitter followers, supposedly. 

Right. 

David: And, and then you start to realize smoke and mirrors. I mean, early on with Twitter, I would, um, follow someone, a celebrity, again, I won't name names, although I have a very particular influencer in mind, and my whole Twitter feed became that person.

David: This was before they really got algorithmic. Uh 

Liz: huh. Uh huh. 

David: And immediately I saw, I was like, something smells here, because a second ago, I had this great feed of like all these authors and editors and people I knew, which made Twitter so exciting in the early days. Right, right. And now my whole feed is this person, because they're just posting like every 15 minutes.

David: And I was like, okay, nobody would continue this way. No one who's actually using Twitter would stay following this person. So all those million followers are nonsense. I don't know what the nonsense is. I don't know if it's just people who sign up for Twitter and just don't check it and just have, follow people but don't read it.

David: But there's no actual users. Behind 

Liz: those accounts. Right, because you would, 

David: you would just be inundated with. One person. 

Liz: Right, right. And 

David: so that was a wake up call that some of these things are totally phony and people measure it. People in my world, , measure the impact on book sales and they'll say, okay, one Facebook follower is worth, you know, and get those equations.

David: And, you know, you start to realize the real acid test, if they're sitting with you, if they're choosing to sit with you in one form or another, that's power. Now, they're paying attention for the book. If you're just part of a feed You know and you're just kind of there and they just clicked on you for some reason or because you did a marketing campaign they're worth very little but if they're signed up to your newsletter and they're inviting you into their inbox or if they're Watching your youtube videos or if they're listening to your podcast you have an audience member And then you just have to make something that they want to read.

Liz: Yep, and that means something. That has weight behind it. Um, I have one more question for you, Dave, and then I want to hear what you're reading right now, just for fun, having nothing to do with the work world, although I know it's very hard to disentangle the two., um, explain to me How you prefer for your work to be credited.

Liz: I'm sure that's a conversation you have with the people that you're writing books with. Is it in collaboration with? Are you on the same page? Title page. Are you on the cover? I'm always curious about the, the breakdown of that credit. 

David: I like to be invisible. 

Liz: Okay. 

David: So I, I am in the acknowledgements if the author decides to acknowledge me, and I also usually end up writing the acknowledgement

David: So do include yourself. It can be awkward. No, no. Yeah, I, I, I, and I never say a word about it. Um, they tend to include me, but if they don't or if they, I, I don't say a word about it. Um, so I'm there and I feel like an editor, an agent, anyone who would need to know. They can look there, and they never say I'm the writer.

David: They always kind of allude to my help. 

Right. 

David: But they can tell. So for my purposes, that's fine. I don't want to be on the cover. Some of my colleagues do. But the fact is, and also, you know, there are many collaborators out there. Many. If someone is famous, the odds that they're also a really good writer are very slim.

David: So outside of people who have a very idiosyncratic, if you look at Matthew McConaughey's Greenlights, for example, like if they have a very idiosyncratic approach to the book, they wrote it. But nine times out of 10, if it's any sort of memoir, if it's any sort of a book of advice, chances are somebody like me was involved and you'll, and you'll notice sometimes there'll be a with so and so, um, and then, but, but, but far more often there's no name there.

David: And it's just me or someone like me who was involved and didn't really need or wasn't able to secure it. I could get it if I want to do. I don't want to. 

Liz: Yeah. And what are you reading? 

David: Just finished, uh, Bruce Chatwin. Songlines, which was a big book, uh, about the aboriginal people in Australia. He was a travel writer and he went around Australia, um, I think the 70s, I want to say.

David: It's also the book where Moleskine notebooks come from. 

Liz: What? 

David: That's They're fake. They're not a real thing. So, uh, the mythology of Moleskine notebooks came from him talking about trying to get a particular notebook that he used to use. And someone read that and said, and they went out of business. 

Liz: Oh, yes, I did know that.

David: Yeah, and so he, so someone, a paper company was like, we should make that notebook that he talks about in that book because it's so romantic. So that, I, I forgot that connection and then I was reading and so funny. I fell for that hook, line, and sinker. Me too. I've wasted so many of those. Um, and then, uh, I just started The Spirit Catches You When You Fall Down, which, by Anne Fadiman, which is about a Hmong family in California where the daughter, uh, has epilepsy, but because of their cultural differences, The, and the doctors not understanding the cultural differences of the Hmong beliefs, her care goes awry.

David: And I've heard it recommended a million times. And so I just dug into it and, um, so far so good. 

Liz: I've always wanted to read that. I need to pick it up. 

David: There you go. 

Liz: I just started, , Sally Rooney's new book. Oh, wow. Which I believe came out today. 

David: Did you have the prestige arc? 

Liz: I did have the Prestige 

David: Arc, 

Liz: but I gave it to my older daughter who held on to it for like a month, so I just got it back, and I'm liking it so far.

Liz: , I'm reserving judgment, but yes, , I'm liking it so far. 

David: Oh, I hope, I hope it sticks the landing. 

Liz: Yes, I hope so too. I'll, I'll let you know. Dave, this was really fun. It's been good to hear about the happy, the You know, Curve after, after Amazon.

David: Yeah. For both of us. We 

Liz: both survived. Yes. And we both learned a lot. I will say, I didn't say, I didn't say this, but I still carry some of those lessons into my work life now in, in, in the best way. Just wasn't a good fit for me at the moment. 

David: Yeah, I think if it's a good fit, you probably should see a psychiatrist.

Liz: And I also think it's, it's kind of, there's a certain irony to the fact that here we are doing a podcast for an independent bookstore and we met at Amazon and we live to tell the tale. We're fighting the good fight. I would much rather be here affiliated with Watchung Books. Me too. Thank you, Dave. 

David: My pleasure.

Marni: Thank you, David and Liz. Listeners, you can find all the books they talked about in our show notes and at watchungbooksellers. com. Got a lot of events in October. Here are a few coming up.

Marni: Tonight, Tuesday, October 15th, high schoolers and their caregivers will want to come out for a college essay writing workshop with Eric Tipler, author of Writing Yourself In. And Thursday, October 17th, Susan Mulcahy shares the dirt on the New York Post in Paper of Wreckage, 

 On Sunday, October 20th 

we're really excited to partner with Montclair Film Festival for an event 

Kathryn: With Ina Gar and Stephen Colbert.

Kathryn: To be discussing Ina's new memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, and tickets are on sale now.

 something for everyone this fall, so please check out all of our events in our newsletter, show notes, or at watchungbooksellers. com.