Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (61 page)

Because self-help books are so dependent on publicity, Ms. Burbank notes that “the author/spokesperson still comes first in editorial decision making.” That means the author must have impressive credentials, be
articulate, do well on talk shows, give workshops, and be well connected to other leading authors in the field
.

What the editor looks for, Ms. Burbank stresses, is not a book written to formula but one “with some tooth-marks on it, some signs of turmoil. … For me the best self-help writer is the person who has personally wrestled with and overcome a problem
.”

Incorporating examples from her own career, Ms. Burbank’s essay covers such topics as selecting the subject matter of the book; acquisition; working with the author on the development, organization, and line editing of the work; marketing; and a look at what’s next in the self-help field. Her essay is a portrait of a happy marriage between an editor and her work. “Every self-help book I edit changes my own life in some way, and I trust it does the same for its readers
.”

Before I knew what an editor was, I wanted to be a teacher: a professor of Renaissance literature, to be exact. From the slum apartment of a graduate student, I looked down on “popular” anything. The only psychological theories I knew were those needed to explain lines of Shakespeare or Milton. It took me a long, painful time to realize that I was more a quick study than a scholar, and that teaching was only one way to spend my days talking about what shapes people’s lives.

I have given up trying to justify the books I edit to my former academic colleagues. Popular psychology is the bread and butter of publishing, the “instant backlist,” the surprise best-seller. It is also a genre of ill repute. I once heard Rebecca Sinkler, editor of the
New York Times Book Review
, state categorically that the
NYTBR
would never review self-help books, and most publications follow suit. Self-help books are also segregated onto the
Times’s
“Advice, How-to and Miscellaneous” best-seller list, where they have recently had to fight it out each week with a little fellow in glasses named Waldo.

At their best, however, popular psychology and self-help books are part of the huge democratization of knowledge. (At their worst, they imply that no one has the common sense to come in out of the rain.) Sometimes only a few weeks go by between a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association and the book proposal that lands on my
desk. They also seem to me distinctively American—a reminder of our old faith in self-improvement, self-reliance, and human perfectability, married to the can-do temperament of management: just find the right technique, and you can make life work for you!

The last decade has seen a tremendous deepening of the literature of self-help. One of my memorable mistakes as an editor was failing to go after reprint rights to Robin Norwood’s
Women Who Love Too Much
because I thought “most women” could not relate to the pathological behavior that book described—which included kleptomania, bulimia, and suicide attempts. Since then, of course, the recovery movement has made serious dysfunction the stuff of talk shows. The suggestions and programs self-help books offer today are also dramatically more sophisticated, drawing on material as diverse as new discoveries in biopsychiatry to the spiritual traditions popularized by the New Age movement.

Self-help books are topic driven. Unlike best-selling novelists, previously best-selling self-help writers can fail dramatically if their next topic does not speak directly to their readers’ needs. And when a topic is hot, it often pays to publish a second-best book on the subject even if another publisher clearly has the dominant title. In the early days of recovery, the long-term bestsellerdom of Janet Woititz’s
Adult Children of Alcoholics
spurred very respectable sales for similar but less celebrated titles. The trick is getting out before the glut. (Failing that, one can always edit a trendy word like “codependency” out of the text, as I have found myself doing lately. The problems are perennial; the labels change.)

That said, the author/spokesperson still comes first in editorial decision making. Because they are so little reviewed, self-help books are dependent on publicity. What are the author’s professional credentials? How long has he or she worked with the method the book espouses? Is she articulate and personable, a likely talk-show guest? Is he “on the circuit,” with frequent workshop appearances that will support the book over the long term? Is she in the network of other leading authors in the field (Bantam’s New Age list, in particular, is like a big extended family), or does she have access to top-level endorsements?

In a few cases, we will match a particularly attractive senior author with a co-writer, but the majority of proposals today come in with the match already made if one is needed. The credentials of the co-writer are considered just as carefully. Many co-writers today bring to the project tremendous subject-matter expertise; they are by no means simply wordsmiths.

It helps, of course, to have a wonderful title—like
You Don’t Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted!
, a book that my colleagues were sold on—with accompanying groans and guffaws—before they knew any more about it. I bristle, however, when I hear agents or editors use words like “gimmick” or “hook” or “handle,” as if all we had to do was be clever and manipulative. (The Hollywood term “high concept” is only slightly better—somewhat closer to ideas than to kitchen gadgets.)

In fact, I believe that readers know when they are being manipulated, and when a book, no matter how accomplished, is written to formula. I’d rather have a book with some tooth-marks on it, some signs of turmoil. As I read a proposal, my own level of attention—my sheer alertness, as opposed to my judgment—is often the most useful clue. In books, as in people, we respond to that elusive quality called “presence” or “authenticity,” and no amount of editing can supply it if it is missing.

For me, the best self-help writer is the person who has personally wrestled with and overcome a problem. How much of this struggle will be revealed in the book is a matter of personal taste; it may emerge only as a sense of passionate advocacy. I have urged some writers to be more self-revealing, and I have told others that I thought their self-exposure could hurt them. (In several very successful matches, the co-writer has had a personal stake as well, and I look for this level of commitment.)

I also pay attention to my own stake in the project. Of course I look for books that will balance the list and that fit well with Bantam’s strengths. But there are too many days in publishing when professionalism alone will not sustain you; I am looking for a deeper energy to draw on. Sometimes the title of a proposal makes me laugh out loud and throw my arms wide—“this one’s for me!”—it has struck my need so absolutely. Or perhaps I find myself introducing the concepts of the proposal into every conversation in the next week. Or I may privately dedicate a project to a friend or family member. And because I have thin genes, I have never done a diet book.

Most self-help books are bought at the proposal stage, so my editorial role begins early, with basic focus and development. John Bradshaw, educated in a Catholic seminary, brings a Thomistic architecture to his projects, but other authors struggle with organization until the very end. I dislike the current practice of going directly into page proofs because in the old days of galleys, I sometimes moved portions of chapters even after the book was set.

Most first-time authors ask, “What is your standard editorial procedure?”
and I always answer, “There is none.” Each book, each author, requires a different approach. Most authors prefer to send in early chapters as they are completed, so that we can discuss tone and spot potential problems early. The point-by-point editorial memo and the Post-it marginal flags tend to come at a later stage, when we are filling in gaps. I much prefer working over substantive issues in person or by phone. Then the author or coauthor and I (or sometimes all three of us) can really cook.

The great gift of such meetings is the opportunity to expand and deepen the book, to listen for what the author thinks and feels but has not yet said. Professional circumspection reinforces the chill that descends on many writers before the blank page. (As I once heard Joel Gurin, then editor of
American Health
, tell a group of physicians, “The same surgeon who strides like a god into the operating room and decisively makes the first cut often turns into a cautious bureaucrat on paper, unable to say anything without qualification.”) I go after my authors—their humor, their personal passions and compassion, their fascination with human behavior—and try to persuade them that these qualities are exactly what the reader wants and needs from them.

Experience has made me much bolder and freer at these fishing expeditions than I was when I was younger. I tease and challenge and cheerlead and get a sense of how hard I can push. I tell authors what particularly excites me about what we are doing together—and where I lose interest. I’m beginning, after a lifetime of reticence, to be more self-revealing. And I’m more comfortable with going off track, with not “working” every minute. Sometimes the best things emerge during breaks or over lunch. John Brad-shaw’s delight in taking me on a tour of his new garden prompted me to ask him to write about it; the resulting passage became the very moving introduction to part two of his new book,
Creating Love
.

These are wonderful high, heady hours—the best part of the job. But much of the editing I do falls under the old-fashioned discipline of rhetoric. Popular psychology and self-help aim to change consciousness and to change behavior. (In 1989, Daniel Goleman reported in the
New York Times
that one study had found selected self-help books nearly as useful as therapy in treating mild to moderate problems.) Such change requires an alliance with the reader that must begin on the opening page and be reinforced throughout. How does the author present him or herself, and whom does he or she identify as the audience? I often quote to authors the words of my first boss, Marc Jaffe: “There is no such thing as a mass market. There are only individual readers.” I suggest that therapists write for their most interesting and attractive clients; or for their college reunion group. The writer is an authority (otherwise, why trust the book?), but the reader is also intelligent, conscientious, and responsive (after all, he or she bought
the book!). Once this is established, any tendency to talk down usually disappears.

In John Bradshaw’s
Homecoming
, there is a passage on the “triune brain,” describing a major modern theory of brain evolution and structure. Several early readers suggested that it be cut—a needless complication. I worked very hard with John to make it clear and relevant, but kept it in. The clash of levels—moving from down-home examples to brain research complete with scholarly citations—seemed to me pure Bradshaw, part of his fascination and depth. And if the reader was nonplussed, the passage came deep enough into the book for him to tolerate it before returning to more comfortable ground.

The movement of a self-help book often falls into three parts: identification of the problem, interpretation and exploration of its roots, and the solution. But there are no neat formulas for how these parts are related and meted out. Obviously, a reader has identified with a problem before picking up a book, just as a therapy client does in entering therapy. But the book must create a safe space in which to explore the problem; it takes time to be able to act even on the best advice. Authors with clinical experience grasp this analogy easily. If the first chapter gives away too much, I might ask, “Would you introduce this material in a first therapy session?”

I warn my authors that I have a hobbyhorse about the table of contents and subheads. These can take hours of tinkering, getting the chapter titles as evocative as the main title, showing parallelism where it exists. Subheads should create a dramatic sense of progression within each chapter, and part of my editorial process is nearly always to create an abstract of the subheads to see if they “read,” and to check that the sequence of subordination is correct. Later, the contents and heads often become key marketing tools, providing exactly the focus and phrases that will sell the book.

This marketing consciousness extends to the look of the book as well, beginning with my design memo requesting an “open, accessible self-help style as in
X
” (some previous title) and specifying the special features I want highlighted: exercises or meditations, boxed lists, diagrams.
The Personality Self-Portrait
, by John Oldham, M.D., and Lois Morris, contained a very sophisticated self-test with an equally complex scoring procedure. We went through at least four trial designs of the scoring sheet until we had achieved a design that the authors and I agreed was as clear and user-friendly as it could be.

In a book’s specifically how-to sections, practicality and the detailed anticipation of problems are key. Exercises developed for workshops have to be adapted for individual work. A relationship book must have significant work for those out of a relationship, or for those with recalcitrant partners. My role here is to play a reader who takes everything very literally.
The margins start to bristle with yellow slips: “When should I open my eyes again?” “What if he gets furious when I say this and stomps out?” “What does it mean if I answer yes to this question?”

I believe that the author should also acknowledge when the book is not enough. One day during the writing of
Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them
, Susan Forward called me sounding very agitated. “When they get to this stage of the work,” she said, “a tremendous amount of anger is going to be released. I don’t think readers can handle it on their own. They need to get help, and they need to be careful not to act on their anger impulsively. I feel dishonest implying this is a do-it-yourself process.” “That’s great, Susan,” I said. “Please write exactly what you just told me.”