The Elegant Variation: HARRY, REVISED UPDATE: T MINUS TWO MONTHS

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February 21, 2008

HARRY, REVISED UPDATE: T MINUS TWO MONTHS

When I sold Harry, Revised, what now seems like ages ago, a sage writer friend asked me when the book was scheduled to be published. I said "A year and a half from now," and she patted my arm and said, "It sounds like a lot but the time will fly."

Roger that.

I recently met with my editor in New York, and he advised me that between now and publication we'd be in this weird place where there would be a crazed, busy burst of activity followed by unnerving silence. And that cycle would repeat until the publication date. Well, things are just now coming out of the most recent crazed burst, so I thought I'd continue my look inside the publication process, and check in with another update on where things stand, broken down by section:

Covers: Great, exciting stuff on the cover front. I'm starting to see more of them coming my way, and I've been given the green light to share some with you. First up, there's the Bloomsbury cover for the US, which has changed a bit since we printed the catalog. It's a bolder, eye-catching design, and I think it works beautifully. Here we go, drumroll please, the American Cover:

Harry_bloomsbury_jacket

If you're interested in seeing the entire jacket, including the back and the flap copy, there's a nice PDF version here .

The next cover that got sent to me came from Text, my Australian publisher, and the cover obviously takes a different approach but also, I think, works very nicely, indeed, and speaks well to the book. I only have the front cover to share, but here it is:

Harry_text_cover

It's also worth noting something – one hears all kinds of horror stories about covers, and authors who get stuck with covers they hate, but at every stage, every publisher has sought my input, asked me what I think and – most impressively – taken my thoughts. And I really do get the sense that if I had reason to say "No, absolutely not, hate this," they would have listened. Fortunately that hasn't been an issue. The designers really seem to get the book.

Then this week, I heard from my Dutch publishers Meulenhoff, the respected home of authors like Russell Banks, Gregoire Bouillier, Robert Musil, Carlos Fuentes, Jose Saramago and many others. They are working up a special catalog just for Harry as part of their promotion, and it includes this spectacular cover:

Folder_sarvas_schets_3_page_1

Set to come out in September, this will be my first foreign language version to come to market, so they are already pushing behind it. (The other translations will come in 2009.) You can see the entire catalog they developed for it in a PDF here . As for the title, my publisher advised me that, in Dutch, the word "revised" has duller, academic connotations, hence the change in the book's title, which strikes me as wholly appropriate, since Harry is very much an anti-hero. As I'm sure you can imagine, it's a total thrill to begin to see Harry generating excitement around the world, if a little unreal at times.

My Media and Booksellers dinner: One of the nicest things to happen thus far was the dinner Bloomsbury hosted for me at a wonderful L.A. spot called Lou, at which I got to meet booksellers from my favorite local stores, as well as representatives of the local media. I knew some of these folks already but there's nothing better than spending an evening with good food and wine, talking about books with knowledgeable people. Any nerves that I might have felt dissipated quickly as we got talking about the things we were reading, and were looking forward to. (James Wood was probably discussed more than my novel.)

Book Tour: Folks have been asking about tour plans, so I'm pleased to finally be able to announce tour dates. We have a nice tour in place for Harry: I'll be appearing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at the end of April, and the tour proper begins on May 1 at Duttons, with appearances at Skylight and Vromans following. The tour will include NY, San Francisco, Portland, DC, Boston and a number of others.

I will post a tour sidebar here shortly, and am in the process of redesigning my personal site (about which more presently) but I'm actually very excited to be using BookTour.com to help manage my tour. This is a website launched by my friend Kevin Smokler, who has been tireless in devising new ways to utilize the net in the name of furthering good books. I'm maintaining a full list of tour dates at BookTour, which has great features, like the ability to follow specific authors, and even to request appearances. I urge you to check it out, and I strongly recommend any touring writers make use of it.

The nicest thing about the book tour has been the fact that bookstores are actually asking for me. I'm told it can sometimes be a challenge for publishers to get authors into stores but so far there's been great support, both from the independents and the chains. My publicists at Bloomsbury have been tireless about getting these outings on the calendar, and part of what they do is make sure that there are stocks of books at events and appearances. Of course, I still live in fear of the unattended reading but I am also told that it's inevitable, and at least you get to sign a bunch of books and hang out with booksellers – not a bad way to spend an evening.

Other promotions: I've already begun doing some interviews for Harry – I did a Q&A with Publishers Weekly that asked some fun and thoughtful questions – and those requests are starting to ramp up a bit now. The thing I tend to worry about here is not repeating myself, not getting locked into a script when talking about the book, which is something I notice happens when writers are giving a lot of interviews about the same work. (Of course, the requests could dry up entirely, and then I won't have to worry about that particular problem.)

I was also asked to do a brief promotional video for Canongate's sales force, which is meeting this month. Of course, I got too ambitious by half, and my informal three-minute request ended up a five minute video with titles, voiceovers and music. The video basically is me talking about the book – its genesis, its themes, its potential audience – and I might post it at some point if I get up the nerve. (It's a bit rough around the edges.) But here's something I've learned in the process, and that's the importance of your publisher's sales force. These are the people going out there trying to interest booksellers in you, and it's definitely in an author's best interest to do anything to inspire them, which is why I jumped at the request, though I don't especially like being filmed. (I can tell I was nervous because I talk with my hands in the video.)

It was also well past time to redesign marksarvas.com, which is, frankly, ugly as sin. I used a Network Solutions template and it does the job but not much more. So I got a referral for a great web designed named Will Amato, who has designed sites for Jonathan Lethem and Aimee Bender, among others, and he had some witty ideas that actually tie in nicely to the American cover. We'll be unveiling it soon but for the moment it's still under wraps. (When I met Will for coffee to discuss the site, we observed that this idea of authors websites was something that the generation of writers before us didn't have to worry about, and yet they are already an absolute necessity. And it makes one wonder what other apparatus future writers will have to worry about. And, no, I don't plan to join either MySpace or Facebook. I can barely keep up with things right here at TEV.)

Reviews: So what's left? It's getting into a quiet phase and the next landmark on the map is the pre-publication review period, when reviews appear in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, Library Journal and Booklist. Am I nervous about these? Of course I am. But I am trying not to obsess about it, and I do remind myself a key lesson I've learned being on the other side as a book reviewer: It really is one reviewer's opinion. It might have the banner of a publication overhead but, ultimately, an individual picked up your book and either did or didn't respond to it. There's probably a 50/50 chance all along, and it's generally not personal when it doesn't go your way. (And is it just me, or is there a rash of indignant reviewees embarrassing themselves in the NYTBR of late? That's one amateur mistake I won't make.) Sure, one hopes for a sympathetic reviewer who gets what you're trying to do but, as I said to my agent, there is the universe of things over which we have no control, and there is the universe of things we actually can influence, and it's best to devote our energies to latter, and simply hope for the best with the former. Which is exactly how I will approach reviews. And that's probably when we'll have the next Harry update.

Posted at 12:01 AM in Harry, Revised | Permalink

Comments

Congrats Mark. Looking forward to reading your novel. TEV is the best literary blog on planet earth and going by its standard, I think we can expect the very best from your novel.

Posted by: Nikesh Murali | February 21, 2008 at 01:34 AM

Congrats Mark. Looking forward to reading your novel. TEV is the best literary blog on planet earth and going by its standard, I think we can expect the very best from your novel.

Posted by: Nikesh Murali | February 21, 2008 at 01:35 AM

What a great entry ! A palp of excitement.

Posted by: paul Sweeney | February 21, 2008 at 02:01 AM

Congratulations! That American cover is extremely striking.

Posted by: Levi | February 21, 2008 at 06:19 AM

The Dutch cover is... amazing.

Posted by: Brady Westwater | February 21, 2008 at 07:39 AM

'I said to my agent, there is the universe of things over which we have no control over'
The use of prepositions not usually being one of them!
How exciting the impending birth must be. UK publication date?

Posted by: Andrew | February 22, 2008 at 07:56 AM

Yikes. Which is why we have copy editors. Thanks, Andrew. Superfluous preposition deleted. And the UK release is planned for September.

Posted by: TEV | February 22, 2008 at 08:44 AM

I'll be in NY in July so I'll pick one up then. Might even pay for it, in fact.

Posted by: Andrew | February 22, 2008 at 01:28 PM

You forgot the part about the litbloggers getting ahold of the book...Haha! Love the U.S. cover.

Posted by: Jeff | February 22, 2008 at 03:40 PM

The covers look great, Mark! I would have picked up a copy anyway because you wrote it, but now the novel seems even more enticing - in all editions!

Posted by: bambina | February 23, 2008 at 05:41 AM

Everything looks great, but that U.S. cover in particular is terrific. Congrats.

Posted by: JMW | February 23, 2008 at 08:12 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

TOUR DATES

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

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Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

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*Now in Paperback*

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Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

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The Rider by Tim Krabbe

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 21, 2008

HARRY, REVISED UPDATE: T MINUS TWO MONTHS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 21, 2008

HARRY, REVISED UPDATE: T MINUS TWO MONTHS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism