Trends Among Successful Books, An Interview With Literary Agent Jeff Herman

Current Position:	The Jeff Herman Agency, LLC was founded in 1987 by Jeff Herman and has since sold hundreds of titles to publishers. The agency represents general adult nonfiction books on business, commercial self-help, technology, recovery/healing, general reference and spiritual subjects.
Author Of:	Jeff Herman is the author of two books: Writer's Guide To Book Editors, Publishers and Literary Agents, which has sold more than 350,000 copies, and Write The Perfect Book Proposal: 10 Proposals That Sold And Why!
In The Public Eye:	Jeff has appeared on numerous television and radio shows and has been written about in publications such as Success, Publisher's Weekly, Forbes, The Associated Press, and The New Yorker.
Also Known For:	Prior to opening his own agency, Jeff was a publicist at Schocken Books and worked for a New York public relations firm where he designed and managed national consumer marketing campaigns for Nabisco Brands and AT&T.
Website:	http://www.jeffherman.com

RainToday.com: Could you tell me a little bit about your background in literary services and The Jeff Herman Agency? How long have you worked specifically with representing authors of business books?

Jeff Herman: I've been a literary agent since 1987. The essence of what I do is I look for material—something that can be a book and that I in turn can sell to a publisher. Part of my job function is to make it as saleable as possible, pitch it to the publisher, and make the best possible deal on behalf of the client in terms of the advance that gets paid, royalties, subsidiary rights, etc.

The reason why we've become important is because publishers don't want to hear from the public; they don't want to have to do all that raw screening that we do. They want it to be filtered by the literary agents, and the agents have an incentive to screen through all of the books to find what they can sell.

I've been working with business books from the get-go. It's always been an area where I've had very good focus and it's always been content that I've felt very comfortable with. It's sort of an intuitive thing.

It's not that I even really enjoy reading business books on a personal level; on my own time I rarely read business books. But I can pick up a business book proposal or manuscript and very quickly determine whether or not it's accomplishing its point and whether or not it can stand out in what's always a very crowded marketplace.

RainToday.com: What do you look for in an author/book when deciding whether or not to represent them? Have you noticed any trends among successful authors and/or books?

Jeff Herman: The way I work is on intuition. The more I find I have to really think about it on a contemplative or intellectual level, the more difficult it gets for me, so I just ask myself, “Can I see this book in a store?”

Sometimes it's just a question of playing with the title. Sometimes the title can rearrange the whole book, and some sell a lot more copies because of it. Others can have excellent material but are not noticed by the public because the title is so misguided; a lot of people walk away just because of what the title is.

There are certain pitfalls you have to look out for. One is that the stuff is just recycled; it's very hard to say what hasn't already been said. But sometimes, just like with singing a song or writing poetry, the writer has come across a different formula or way of expression that can make him or her stand out. And if that happens, that's really delightful. If someone has the potential to become a brand, it adds tremendous viability to the project.

With all areas of self-help and how-to fiction, including business, a lot of it comes down to this terminology that exists in the industry today which is known as a platform. It comes back to author positioning and marketing. Is this an author that will have visibility?

If it's attached to a tremendous marketing plan which is viable and real and provable, then you dismiss the editorial component. The importance of the editorial component is very much tied to the power of the marketing. The weaker the marketing, the stronger the editorial has to be, and vice versa. It's a balance.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In the twenty years that I've been doing this, the only difference I've seen is that publishers have more and more advocated the actual marketing component to the authors, and I think it's becoming more important.

Very often, it comes down to what extent the author can generate visibility and marketability for the book. An author who can hype a book and get results as far as sales will more than compensate for a book that is editorially mediocre.

The other trend, which is really industry-driven, is that fewer books are getting published by publishers. There used to be more independent publishers out there, as opposed to publicly traded, corporate-owned publishers, so business book writers and writers of nonfiction had a lot more opportunities to get published, at least at a very beginning level.

The advances may have been very modest and the initial sales may have been modest, but at least the opportunity to get a start was much better than it is today because now publishers are not as willing to take risks on people. I think it's harder for an author to get “staked” initially by a publisher than it was twenty years ago.

What's compensated is that it's so much easier to self-publish today because of the power of the Internet. It's very easy for the author to have a direct relationship with his or her customers without using a conventional publisher.

It's still, in my mind, very difficult for self-published authors to have bookstore relationships. But if they aren't just focused on the bookstore and can find ways to get direct response or back-of-room sales, they can be very successful without ever having their book published by a publisher.

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