A Likely Story

Friday, January 14th

So here’s their opening offer, and even as an opening offer it stinks. Five thousand dollars on signature, twenty thousand when I have commitments from five “individuals mutually agreed to be prominent,” and another twenty-five thousand on August first. If I don’t have those five prominent noses by June first the deal is off.

Out of this lavish fifty thou, I’m supposed to pay all the contributors! (There’s an additional five thousand they’ve agreed to pay for “research and secretarial” expenses, upon receipt of receipts.) And, as Jack himself pointed out, I’m not running a charity here, I do want a little something for myself.

One good thing about Annie; she’s involved. When she saw Craig’s insulting offer, she smiled thinly and decided to get serious. Annie, who began in publishing as somebody’s secretary during the Adams administration — the elder Adams — and who apparently in her youth screwed most of the literate men on the Eastern Seaboard, has aged into a scrawny bad-tempered old buzzard who knows everybody, loves to fight and has been known to get blood from a stone simply by squeezing hard enough. What can be done, Annie will do.

On the home front, Ginger is very up and positive about The Christmas Book and is saying maybe we can take a winter vacation after all. (Last year we did a week at a condominium on St. Croix, splitting the cost, but this year money has been tighter for both of us.) Ginger’s eight-year-old daughter, Gretchen, is also excited and is doing me watercolors of Christmas scenes “for the book.” She’s a nice kid, Gretchen, and if it’s possible to say that an eight-year-old is talented, Gretchen is probably talented along graphic arts lines — maybe someday she’ll go to the High School of Art and Design — but I’m getting a little tired of primitive Nativity scenes and Santa Claus getting out of taxis and all this stuff. I hope and expect that boredom will set in soon — on her part, I’m already bored — and save me.

Ginger is also being active on the project, but in a more useful way. She’s copy editor at Trans-American Books, a paperback house, and is a very good line editor; she’s rewritten my solicitation letter — the one to be sent to prominent noses — and I have to admit she was right with most of the changes she suggested.

For instance, she pointed out that it wasn’t until the third paragraph that I got to the point of the letter, asking for original material. “Until then,” she said, “it sounds like you’re trying to sell them a copy of the book.” So now, with some necessary adaptation, the third paragraph is the second and the second is the third.

Also, with Ginger’s help, I did a variant letter aimed at photographers, illustrators and graphic artists. (Other than Gretchen.) I’m hoping they’ll be cheaper than the writers.

The question is, when do I actually get to send out these letters?