Sara Nelson: Writer Turned Editor

By James McGrath Morris, WIW Board Member

There was a time when the only thing Sara Nelson—WIW's 27th Washington Writers Conference plenary speaker—had to do was read. In fact, that's pretty much all she did for a year when she persuaded a publisher to pay her to spend 52 weeks reading 52 books and, yup, write a book about it. The resulting work, So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, was a success and made Nelson the new goddess of the literati.

Well, those halcyon days are gone. Nelson is now editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly, the trade magazine of publishing, read by those who write, edit, publish and sell books. As one who once ran a small trade magazine, I can tell you any job with such a glamorous title comes with incredible demands, management woes, hourly deadlines and no time for reading, nonetheless writing. I presumed that Nelson the writer was gone. I presumed wrongly.

Instead of books, Nelson now writes about, well, books. The pace hasn't changed much either. It's a column a week in a year that still had 52 of them. So for those who think that Nelson's wit, chatty style, and kind of snuggle-up-and-listen style were lost to the world when the denizens of the corporate world captured her, here is a Baedeker's guide (complete with links) to the Best of Nelson in her new incarnation as Publishers Weekly's editor-in-chief:

On Dan Brown's trial:
"It's probably the ultimate blasphemy to say so, but I see a lot of commonality between the lionized Brown and the disgraced Frey. In both cases, their stories—and their stories—are full of jealousy, self-righteousness, pride, envy and greed.

Talk about your biblical themes! Just spare us the flood."

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6316991.html?text=sara+nelson

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6301166.html?text=sara+nelson

The recent London Book Fair:
"Of course, no discussion of the London Book Fair (or, for that matter, any topic in the book business) would be complete without admitting that book people are heartily uninterested in change and particularly uncomfortable with it when it comes...

Will it ever again be the good old days for LBF? Probably not. But then, all this post-LBF conversation is more and more reminding me of my favorite lightbulb joke:

How many editors does it take to change a lightbulb?

Why, 100, of course: one to change the bulb and the other 99 to stand around talking about how they actually preferred the dark"

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6315257.html?text=sara+nelson

On the privatization of Thomas Nelson, the Nashville-based religious publisher:
"Clearly, at least one group of somebodies thinks the rumors of publishing's death are greatly exaggerated. After all, InterMedia paid nearly as much for Nelson ($473 million) as Lagardère paid for Time Warner Book Group ($538M), even though Nelson's annual revenues are half that of its big city colleague—a vote of confidence for the future of the company, for sure. Obviously, somebody sees growth here—not to mention many backlist Bible sales that carry no earthly royalty.

But what does it mean that a religious publisher is a hotter commodity than a trade-book one? Like it or not, that fact begets a few others: that publishing does better the nichier it gets (viz: Bookspan, whose specialty clubs far outperform the general ones), that there is a huge and powerful religious community in this country (no "duh") and that many smaller houses have mastered the First Publishing Commandment: know thy audience."

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6310963.html?text=sara+nelson

On the hand wring about Frey
"Fiction or nonfiction? Novel or memoir? That should be the easy part, and we can only hope all the recent hand-wringing will clarify the distinctions that have gotten blurry of late. But a far more common—almost everyday—problem for publishers and booksellers is determining which books should be aimed at which niches, and which niches are most likely to buy.

The debate over labeling has to do with self-perception, but it usually comes down to something far more concrete: bestseller lists and how to get on them. For example, most major houses have now started African-American and/or Latino and/or politically conservative imprints, with distinct editorial missions, but none wants to be ghetto-ized on, say, a separate bestseller list. As for religion (aka "faith-based" publishers), on a recent trip to Nashville I heard executives at Warner Faith, Integrity and Thomas Nelson argue both sides. Shouldn't their books—some of which have sold 200,000, 300,000 and 400,000 copies—be classified as "general" fiction and nonfiction, so they can sit at the big kids' table where, say Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now and Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life have seemingly permanent seats? Or is it better for them to have their own bestseller lists to raise general brand or genre awareness?

The answer probably depends on why you're publishing what you're publishing, and which lists you think your titles might get onto—Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous, for example, is notoriously tough to crack—but at least it's a question people are asking. There are other niche questions as well: Does the YA designation turn away potential readers? Is so-and-so a black author? Is such-and-such for Latinas only? When does targeting equal narrowing?

These controversies will probably never galvanize the likes of Oprah. But at least they're on the minds of publishers and booksellers—and have been, since long before the publishing world was broken into a million little pieces."

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6304893.html?text=sara+nelson

Mega stores that are, well, Mega
"Ronald Reagan once famously dissed environmentalism by quipping, "You've seen one redwood, you've seen 'em all."

I used to feel that way about a certain kind of book retailing: seen one superstore, seen 'em all. And then I went to China.

On a miserably cold Tuesday afternoon, a guide and translator who goes by the name of Eugene took me to visit a bookstore in Beijing. Riggio brothers, take note: this was no mere superstore; it was more like an ultra-super-duper store: eight floors, more than 2,000 square feet each, crammed with tens of thousands of hardcovers, paperbacks, pamphlets, magazines, as well as some school supplies and, inexplicably, one half-floor-full of musical equipment, from pianos to Chinese flutes. The sheer quantity of stuff was itself overwhelming, but what was truly amazing was this: the place was packed. On a weekday! It wasn't even lunch hour, and the whole place looked like Rockefeller Center at Christmastime. What's more, would-be buyers were talking animatedly with what sure seemed to be salespeople, who were animatedly talking back! And there were lines at every cash register of people eager to spend their hard-earned yuan.

It was an incredible sight, second maybe only to the Great Wall itself."

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6301166.html?text=sara+nelson

Not the Best Sellers List, but Posterity's List
"How many books do you have to sell to have a bestseller?

That's probably the question I get asked most often. And while I usually answer with a complicated theorem about relativity and lack of hard numbers and blah, blah, blah, the truly succinct answer—as everybody knows—is "Beats me."

But there's another question I hear on occasion—and it's a far more sophisticated one. "What books will be read in 50 or 100 years?" some people want to know. "What will last?"

Will readers in 2106 look to Tom Wolfe to tell them about life in the 20th century as we look to Jane Austen for the 19th? Will Michael Crichton be the H.G. Wells, Zadie Smith the Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace the new Charles Dickens? Will James Frey's A Million Little Pieces float into a new century or into thin air. Like I said: beats me."

www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6297771.html?text=sara+nelson