NOTE: This was the fourth and final Doug and Paul "conversation." It posted September 22, 2015. Shortly after the post appeared, a colleague asked me to take it down (they said it was making some people uncomfortable). So I took it down. The post lives here as an archival record, a reminder that even in book publishing, there exists a pernicious form of corporate censorship.

MID-SEPTEMBER. EARLY EVENING. HUDSON MALONE. DOUG AND PAUL ARE SITTING AT THE BAR, BOTH NURSING MAKER'S MARK NEAT.

PAUL: So. Harper Lee.

DOUG: Minting money.

Still?

You bet. Making bank everyday. You have no idea.

Not surprised. She’s a god. People love that goddamn book so of course it follows that Watchman would break big. (Doug laughs here) What?

Well...

Well what?

We dodged a bullet, is all. This had the potential to devolve into a huge mess.

What do you mean, potential? It was a mess. Front page of the Times, colleagues contradicting each other. Editor hadn’t read the book, others at the company didn’t know about it, lawyer making up stories about the provenance of the material.

Could’ve been a lot worse.

I’ll say. Fucking elder abuse.

Think what you want, man. All I know is the State has spoken and we are free and clear. The broad was determined to be compos mentis.

Fantastic. You should’ve used that in your advertising campaign: “Lee Compos Mentis. Watchman Lives.”

I actually wrote down the ruling (Doug begins scrolling through his mobile). You have no idea how many goddamn questions I was getting from customers. I was fucking terrified we might have to pull the thing. Here it is, and I quote (Doug reads this with emphasis): “There has been no evidence of manipulation, abuse or neglect.” Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Human Services. I served that statement right up to the folks at Books-A-Million. They were getting antsy when all this shit was breaking in their backyard.

I bet.

Thank god it all worked out in the end.

(BEAT)

Still. It’s not a feel good story. Know what I mean? The broad outlines are concerning. Not what you want people talking about in the run up to publication. (BEAT) It raises serious questions about our industry.

You should fucking talk with that new guy.

What new guy?

Leinenkugel.

Who?

The guy who is not Stieg Larsson.

His name is Lagercrantz. David Lagercrantz.

Whatever. It’s the same thing.

It’s not the same thing.

You’re right. Larsson is dead. Lee is alive.

He was dead when we acquired the trilogy. (BEAT) We never had a body. Now we have a body.

(BEAT) Is he Jewish?

Who?

Leinenkugel.

Lagercrantz. And I don’t fucking know.

Larsson wasn’t a Jew.

How is that relevant?

Just sayin’. Shouldn’t everything line up?

The only thing that needs to line up is his book next to number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Which it has.

Exactly. (BEAT) We’re giving readers what they want. We’re giving them more Lisbeth.

And we’re giving them more Atticus.

Bingo. (BEAT) I’m sure at some point we’ll both be asked to pay reparations.

(BEAT)

PAUL: You hear what’s going on over at Conde?

DOUG: No.

Corporate hired a consulting firm to audit all the magazines.

Ugh.

That’s not the worst of it. I gather employees need to account for like every minute of their day.

Seriously?

That’s what I’m hearing.

God. I hope that never happens to us. Can you imagine? I don’t do anything.

Neither do I. (BEAT) I talk to reporters. Sometimes.

I talk to customers. Sometimes.

So we both do something.

But that accounts for what?

Fifteen minutes a day. Tops.

Say there was a consultant asking you about the rest. What would you tell him?

I’d tell him I spend the rest of the day reading. And thinking. And jacking off.

That’s what editors get paid to do! (They both laugh).

Talk about a soft gig. Read a few pages. Convince the brass to write a check. Then celebrate at a long boozy lunch with the agent.

A lunch where the agent stares down the bill as if it were a found fossil.

They never fucking pay. Ever.

What a goddamn business.

(BEAT)

PAUL: So I get a call from an editor at Vanity Fair. She says “The consultants are monitoring everything we do online.” And I was like, well, that’s a given. Companies monitor everything all the time. It’s been going on at Random House for years. They have a team of Germans collecting all of our email and social posts and feeding them into the Hadron Collider. Then she says, “They are producing detailed reports based on our activity. I just got mine. One section reads: ‘email response rate 53% and very slow – 489 minutes. Company risks losing business to competitors as a result.’”

Wow.

The thing is: she is slow on email.

Still.

They’re also making her wear some kind of fitbit.

No.

Yes.

A fucking fitbit?

They want to monitor her physical activity and mental acuity during the day.

Jee-zus.

Listen: it’s all coming our way, Doug. This is how companies conduct business in the twenty-first century. Everyone likes to knock Amazon publicly, but the truth is, privately, in corporate boardrooms, companies want to emulate them. Everything is preparation for the cull.

(BEAT)

PAUL: Laura wears a fitbit.

DOUG: Mary Kay too.

Counts her steps. (BEAT) Who gives a shit about steps?

I hate fucking steps. Isn't that why we drive cars? (BEAT) Monitors your heart rate too.

Just what I need when I’m out on the road with an author. A prompt from a fitbit telling me I’m having a fucking heart attack.

Stairs climbed. Hours slept.

Kale you’ve eaten.

Aren’t our bodies capable of telling us these things?

The scary part is that all of this data is being fed to HR. They’re tracking everything we say and do. Target was the first. I’m sure there will be others.

What happened at Target?

They’re providing all their employees with fitbits.

Oh boy.

The guy who runs fitbit is telling companies that his device will save them millions of dollars by driving down healthcare costs.

This is not a good development for book publishing.

No it is not.

I mean ours is basically a sedentary population of drinkers and smokers.

Correct.

Who’s gonna want to insure us?

No one.

We’re all going to die at our desks.

Fuck. (BEAT) I’d like a fitbit to monitor this (Paul lifts up his glass and gulps down the rest of his drink. Then he motions to Quinn). Quinn. Two more.

(BEAT)

DOUG: How is Davis?

PAUL: Still on the dole.

Wow. I didn’t see that comin’.

Neither did I. I mean the guy bled Brooks Blue for twenty fucking years and they cut him like bait.

I get that part of it. New guy comes in, wants to flash his shaft, first thing he does get rid of the guys who don’t marry up to his vision. What I don’t get is the long tail in all this. I figured he’d have a job the next week.

Me too.

He’s a smart guy. Always made his number.

Always. Plus he knows the rag trade inside out. And as far as I can tell, his colleagues loved him.

But he didn’t buy into the vision.

No he did not.

(BEAT)

Thank God Murray has a saleable vision.

What is it?

“We need to find those fucking pages for The Reverend.” (They both laugh) He’s got a SWAT team moving through Alabama right now. (BEAT)

What about Sonny? What’s his vision?

Grim. Always grim.

A man after my own heart.

It’s an effective style of management. Keeps everyone on their toes. (BEAT)

And Markus?

Happiest CEO I’ve ever met. The guy has an oompah-loompah band trailing him around the building.

Not surprised with the year you’re having. Girl on the Train. Grey. The lost Seuss. Leinenkugel. (BEAT) What the fuck is it with all these lost books?

I don’t know. All I know is that when we find ‘em we milk the shit out ‘em.

(BEAT)

Were you in on the auction last week?

Everyone was in on the auction last week. The proposal went out to fifteen hundred fucking people. Matt Damon got one. On Mars.

We had a good meeting.

We did too.

She’s smart. Funny. Solid on the page. (BEAT) Still. It’s a big nut.

I know.

I say good for her. If someone out there is willing to lay down a marker, she should collect.

My problem is with the valuations. They aren’t based on the merits of the project. They’re based on what others will be bidding. It’s how the market gets made these days. (BEAT) Updike had it right.

How so?

He never took an advance.

Really?

He would write a book, send us the pages, and then we would negotiate on the phone.

No agent?

Never.

He was an honorable man.

Yes he was.

Who does that anymore?

No one.

Now we bid on pages.

On outlines.

On one-page summaries.

The minute someone starts a blog, they’ve got representation. I had an agent from WME send me an email. “Take a look at this tweet,” he says, “I think there’s a book here. Call me."

Jee-zus.

I get name calls from agents all the time. “So and so is writing a book,” they’ll say, “You interested?” And then when you say “possibly” they say “We’re setting bids at ten million.”

It’s like fucking Hollywood.

It’s worse. I mean in Hollywood, at least someone is getting laid at the end of the transaction. Our business is Hollywood without the sex.

(BEAT)

PAUL: It’s not just the money. It’s the cast of characters. They’re interchangeable. You get fired from Random, Penguin hires you the next day.

DOUG: With a better title and more pay. Same company! You can’t make this shit up.

The talent pool is much deeper in other industries. You’re competing against thousands of applicants. We don’t have the same subsets of candidates. We basically have that fucked up publishing program at Columbia. You ever see those kids? They’re like the cast from a Whit Stillman movie.

Caviar kids.

Seriously. None of them have ever held a job. Take a look at their hands. Pale pink and manicured. Even the guys.

I’m from Texas, man. They ain’t my people.

Mine either.

I want people who know how to work. Who drive Ford F-150s.

Here’s to that, man. (They toast)

(BEAT)

DOUG: So what’s Davis doing?

PAUL: Playing a lot of golf.

Cocksucker.

Handicap has come down by 5 strokes.

We both need to get laid off.

He’s been on fifteen interviews over the past three months.

Any prospects?

Hard to say. These guys have you over a barrel. And the entire process is so fucking grueling and demeaning.

How so?

The hoops they make you jump through are unconscionable. He went on a six-hour callback interview last week.

Six hours?

Yes. This after having spent a day meeting with all the senior execs at the company last month. So they’ve already tapped his ass for a day and a half and now he has to come back for a battery of tests. Aptitude, personality, emotional intelligence.

It’s a full time job interviewing for a fucking job.

He has to meet with a fucking shrink. There’s a part of me that wishes I was in his shoes so I could say to one of these guys: “Why don’t we just go out and have a drink and an honest conversation about the world, rather than running me through a battery tests?”

Whatever happened to trusting your gut?

Gone. This is the era of algorithm-tested, big data-collected, evidence-based assessments. (BEAT) He had to agree to a follicle test.

What is that?

They pluck a hair from your head and send it to a lab for testing.

Seriously?

Yes. My understanding is that strands of whatever you’ve been smoking or snorting or ingesting stay in your hair for years.

No way. (BEAT) Who would agree to that?

Anyone who wants a job at Anheuser-Busch.

Seriously? The company that gave us “Up for whatever?”

You bet.

What a bunch of fucking hypocrites. I will never drink a can of Budweiser again.

Right? (BEAT) Not that we would drink it in the first place.

Seriously. I feel like writing to the president, saying “Who do you think you are, encouraging citywide public intoxication then having prospective employees tested for a little weed. Get a fucking life.”

Kids today all smoke weed.

I know.

They smoke more weed than cigarettes.

That’s probably a good thing. (BEAT) We need to smoke more weed. I bet you Harper is smoking a doobie in Monroeville right now!

Here’s to more weed! (They both toast).

(BEAT)

DOUG: What would happen to us?

PAUL: You and I?

Yes. I mean supposing we were to get the can tomorrow.

Which could happen.

Definitely.

According to Ta-Nehisi, we’re the embodiment of white exceptionalism.

You and I are basically unemployable.

That’s what I was thinking.

Quinn. Two more.

(BEAT)

Hard to have an honest conversation in this business anymore.

How so?

Editors. They’re not interested in hearing bad news.

No they’re not.

Most are in denial.

Denial is an essential attribute if you are going to achieve any measure of success in this industry.

Books fail all the time.

The moment they go on-sale.

They’re dead in the pre-sale.

And no one wants to talk about it.

Actually that’s not true. Sonny wants to talk about it. Guy runs the most successful shop in book publishing and all he wants to talk about is “why things aren’t working.”

He sees and knows. The entire industry is a dumpster fire waiting to happen.

I had a producer from NPR call me the other day. She was sorting through a few story ideas and wanted to talk on background. She asked me if I had read the story in The Bookseller about the Man Booker longlist nominees and I said “Yes” and then she asks me if I surprised about the figures they quoted and I said “No.” Then she says, “So it’s not an aberration, four figure book sales?” And I was like, “If you were to examine the ledger of any book publisher in America, you would see a great wash of titles that sell in the low to mid four figures. This is not a trend but rather a constant.” Then she starts asking me about the PW story that quoted the Authors Guild saying the majority of writers in the world do not make a living wage. And as I’m talking to her I’m beginning to see where she is going and hearing these stories play out on the air.

I can’t believe our tax dollars subsidize this shit.

Right? Imagine waking up to, “On NPR this morning, Awards Can’t Stem Anemic Book Sales.” And then a follow on segment, “Why Authors Can’t Make A Living Wage.”

(BEAT)

Yet here we are.

Basking in the glow of Harper Lee’s millions.

Amen to that, brother.

END