Nora

(Liz) I've been in New York all week attending the Random House sales conference.  Sales conference, as I'm sure we've mentioned before, is an all day affair, an invigorating and grueling combination of long hours and lots and lots of books.  We begin at 8 am and finish the day at...it varies, but let's just say 10 pm.  For days on end.  Yesterday was one of those days--the thrill of sitting in the room with some of publishing's elite editors, the awareness that we were in New York (where great books are born, where the Victoria's Secret building is across the street, where Rod Stewart lives upstairs), the excitement of a new list of books.  Last night, after a day that I probably took too much for granted, I was chatting in the hotel bar with my boss and a couple of colleagues, and I received an email.  I glanced down and saw the alert that Nora Ephron had died.

No doubt you've seen the news; it's difficult to miss today.  Like most people, I appreciated Ephron's wit and works.  She was a woman who believed in standing up for women, and she chose to do so while maintaining her sense of humor.  My college roommate decorated our room with the posters for When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle; I looked at them every day for a year, and that was really the first time I ever picked up on her name.  The movie Julie & Julia was responsible for the incredible Julia Child renaissance of the last few years.

And then there was Nora Ephron the writer.  Being a book buyer, as I was while working at BookPeople, often was a job of educated risk-taking.  I don't think I ever missed so wildly as I did in underestimating the appeal of Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck. Oops.  What made yesterday's surprise announcement particularly shocking to me, though, was the knowledge that people in the room where we were sitting and discussing new titles, these people knew Nora Ephron personally.  They published her and they loved her.  As Gianna posted on Facebook yesterday, "Nora Ephron was rare; she actually mentored other women in Hollywood. She also for some reason, felt it important to remind people that women still matter after the age of 18. I know my old colleagues at RH who are gathered in NYC for conference must be lifting a glass to her right now. Cheers Nora, you will be missed."

This morning, before our morning meeting began, Random House COO Madeline McIntosh began our day by remarking on the news of Ephron's passing.  (Allow me to take a moment to digress and state how proud I am to work for a company and sales department with such strong women leaders such as Madeline.  While women are still paid on average significantly less for the same work and have to work harder for promotions, many of us on the RH sales force note the high-ranking women in our company.  It's cool.)  She said that after hearing the news last night, she searched for an appropriate Nora Ephron quote to share with us, but came up short after some furious Googling.  This morning, though, another colleague passed along one resonated.  Hearing it, I considered why I chose to enter the book business, and most probably why my colleagues--smart, funny, creative, talented people who could do any number of other things--work here too.

Nora Ephron had a talent for stating what she was thinking, and making statements that made you think.  And she had a gift for entertaining.  She was a remarkable talent and a role model.  She was a friend of my colleagues.  I'm sorry that she's gone.

This is the quote that Madeline read:

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.” --Nora Ephron

Sale Conference, More Awkwardness from the Land of the Socially Inept

Liz again here.  I returned from Florida and the Random House sales conference late on Sunday, and then have tried to recover and soothe the raving, blood-thirty beast (the cat).  Gianna says that I should post some more thoughts about sales conference.  I'm too scared of her not to follow her directions.

What's sales conference like?

Dr. Seuss hats for all!
Dignity for none!

• There's a lot of sitting in uncomfortable chairs, and for a conference at which books are discussed round the clock, there's never any time to actually read.  
• The bar in the hotel is designated as a hospitality suite, and if you wear your name tag you can drink as much as you want.  There are always a few people who think that gettin' sloppy with the colleagues is a great finish to a day...and there are always a few people who think that spending time in the hospitality suite is its own ring of hell.  
• Every company has its inside jokes and jokesters.  Some are actually funny.  More are not.  
• I always feel sorry for the tourists who are staying at the resort and are surrounded by hundreds of Random House employees.  That said, these people have the pool all to themselves all day.  I did have a view of the pool from my hotel room...so of course I took a bunch of pictures of the people with the man boobs testing the theory of water displacement eight floors below me.  
• Sonny Mehta is there.  Sonny is the Editor in Chief of Knopf.  We follow him into the bookish abyss with reckless abandon.
• Oh yeah, and we talk about a bunch of books, some of which are truly exciting.  

Here's an early tease for a book coming out this fall:

Andrew Porter teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio, and though Trinity is the hated rival of my alma mater, Southwestern University, I set aside petty rivalries of liberal arts institutions with Division III NCAA status (no scholarship athletes) for local authors.  Andrew wrote a brilliant short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, a couple of years ago, which ended up winning the Flannery O'Connor Award.  Now he's delivered his first novel, In Between Days.

Andrew Porter

In Between Days echoes John Cheever or Richard Yates, and I mean that as the highest compliment.  Much fiction these days either is post-apocalyptic or else off-putting-ly clever (clever for the sake of cleverness), and while I admire some narrative manipulation, it can also become tiresome.  Andrew Porter simply writes beautiful sentences about normal people in normal times...if one can claim that these are normal times.  His novel is set in Houston and is centered on a family coming apart.  The father, Elson Harding, an architect, has divorced his wife of 30 years, Cadence.  Their son Richard is adrift, still living at home after graduating from college and dabbling at writing poetry.  He's full of angst, naturally.  Their daughter Chloe suddenly has to come home from her East Coast college, though, and the circumstances around her arrival pitch the family into turmoil.  There's a tension here, as well as an attention to detail without getting lost in the details, that makes In Between Days one of my favorite upcoming novels.  I know it's very early, but jot down this title for the fall.  You'll thank me.

That's it from Florida, but here's one last picture for you:

Moobs.

Sales Conference, Or a Tale of Awkwardness

The view from my
hotel room

I, Liz, flew to Florida very, very early this morning for the annual in-person sales conference for fall books.  For those of you dozens of readers who aren't in the book business, basically this is the company pep talk meeting, awards presentation dinner(s), and discussion of new books.  Parts of conference are exciting...and parts involve socially awkward people attempting to interact with other socially awkward people, to varying levels of self-awareness.  It's a hoot.

Here are some observations before I have to turn in my computer so that the IT people can remove an entire cat's worth of Zorro fur from my keyboard.

A beautiful site.

• The Sanibel Resort is a Marriott property.  Marriott signed a deal with the devil (Pepsi).  My colleague Toni drove in from Tampa and brought me a case of Diet Coke, but she's staying in another building, so I had to claim my Diet Coke at the front desk.  I'm rationing.
• Here's the thing: I work from home, not an office.  I therefore don't see the same people every single day, so technically I could wear the same clothes every day if I wanted.  To come up with clothes for five days can be a challenge.  
• Also, we are book people.  We don't speak normal English...which is fine since the big boss, Markus, is German.  There is the whiff of desperation out there, the "Talk to MEEEEEEE!!!" of people who spend lots of time talking to the cat.
• My boss asked me to be on a panel. She claims that my participation isn't just to provide an excuse to fire me.



Sales people flock to receive
a signed book from Grisham.

• John Grisham.  I sat at his table for dinner.  He requested the vegetarian plate.  Considering the frightening slab-o-cow that was deposited in front of me, I ate the whipped potatoes and the salad.
• Speaking of Grisham, he has a new novel coming in April.  He's been a huge baseball fan all of his life (in spite of the fact that he's a Cardinals fan), and this is his first baseball-related story.  Calico Joe tells the story of a rising star playing for the Cubs, Joe Castle, and a struggling pitcher for the Mets, Warren Tracey, set during the summer of 1973.  Joe explodes onto the scene, breaking a record with his first few at bats.  He's a superstar in the making for the long-suffering Cubs fans (ask Gianna about her pain).  Warren Tracey's son Paul tells the story of these two baseball players, the baseball code, and a fateful August day when their paths collided.  It's a good read--reminiscent of The Natural.
• I "celebrated" my fifth year with Random House.  And then I pointed out to a colleague celebrating her 35th year that I have only been alive 35 years.  I'm classy like that.

Unless Gianna figures out how to post on the blog, there might be a couple of days hiatus.  Just remember, Liz is always the answer.

Coming April 2012