A Fictional, Fun Take on the Book Industry

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A bookseller is one of the few good guys among a nasty cast of characters in Blind Submission, memoirist Debra Ginsberg's debut novel set in a Bay Area literary agency. A sort of Devil Wears Prada for the book industry, the November Book Sense Pick follows bookseller Angel Robinson in her search for a new job when the fictional Blue Moon Books in Corte Madera, California, closes as a result of chain store competition. Angel lands at a highly successful, but dysfunctional, literary agency, helmed by the fearsome Lucy Fiamma, where she deals with machinating, inept co-workers, batty writers, and even possibly ... a murderer.


Debra Ginsberg

Ginsberg, who loosely drew on her own experiences in the book industry to write her novel, told BTW that the bookseller as hero was one element that was pure nonfiction.

Book industry insiders will recognize Corte Madera, the location of Ginsberg's Blue Moon Books, as the home of the real-life Book Passage (which, it should be noted, just celebrated its 30th anniversary and plans to be around to celebrate many more).

There are thinly veiled publishing references (for example, Long, Greene instead of Little, Brown); allusions to books both real and imagined; bitter, but funny, office politics conducted largely through passive-aggressive IMs and e-mail; off-the-wall query letters and chunks of manuscript submissions from some whacked-out and some promising writers, and even a kind of sustained campy suspense (complete with red herrings), when an anonymous novel, also titled Blind Submission, arrives in installments via e-mail. The manuscript, which Angel is editing and promoting in-house, slowly reveals a tale eerily similar to events unfolding at work, but with a vicious twist, suggesting a similar fate awaits someone at the agency. As if things weren't bad enough, Angel is repeatedly told, "books on publishing never sell."

That was the same refrain Ginsberg heard when she was looking to find a publisher for the real Blind Submission, which had a "very twisted path to being published," she said. "Let's just say that, like Angel, I kept hearing 'Books about publishing don't sell.' I think it's weird that people in publishing think other people aren't interested in it. Especially since they presume an interest in every other thing, however obscure. Since it seems like everyone is trying to get published, you'd think it'd be a no-brainer."

Ginsberg's interest in writing, and seeing her work in print, started early. "I've always wanted to tell stories," she explained. "We lived in England and didn't watch a lot of TV. I did a lot of reading. One thing I can remember is always going into bookstores and wanting to see my name on the books. I've always wanted to write, and I've always wanted to be published. The ideas were always firmly intertwined for me. I've been fascinated by the publishing industry since the time when I was young."

That interest fueled a career with various literary agencies, where she worked until she was published, which in turn provided some of the fodder for her novel. Even the outlandish Lucy Fiamma isn't far from reality, said Ginsberg. "Let's just say I've seen a few things. I didn't make it all up. It's probably representative of what it's like in most literary agencies and probably most business offices."

Though representative, Ginsberg "wanted to explore that line between fiction and what's real," she said. "That area is becoming very gray. Memoir is fiction and fiction is true. I wanted to explore if you can ever really know if something is real or not."

Still, Blind Submission is a novel, and a switch for Ginsberg who wrote the memoirs Waiting, Raising Blaze, and About My Sisters. "It was freeing that I could make things up and didn't have to follow any prescribed pattern," she explained. "But by the same token, some things were more difficult. When writing nonfiction you have that structure -- it already has a beginning, middle, and end. Parts of writing Blind Submission were very challenging. There's a book within a book, and I had to keep the plot lines straight and had to view things through Angel's perspective."

Other challenges included ratcheting up the suspense without drifting completely into another genre. "I didn't feel up to writing a bona fide thriller," explained Ginsberg. "But I felt that what I could do well was psychological suspense, which can be just as disturbing." Adding red herrings required a little restraint and some second-guessing. "You want to throw them out there without being really obvious," she said. "I wanted readers to question their own judgment about things.... It is pretty twisty; it keeps you guessing."

One of the calmer influences in the book is the character of Elise Miller, the owner of Blue Moon Books. Elise, said Ginsberg, was based in part on Carole Carden, owner of the now-closed Esmeralda Books in Del Mar, California.

Ginsberg spent a lot of time at Esmeralda when she waited tables at a restaurant next door. "She was great," Ginsberg said of Carden. "When my first book came out, we had the launch at Esmeralda." Elise is also a composite of Adrian Newell at Warwick's in La Jolla and Allison Hill of Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena.

"I love Allison, Adrian, and Carol," said Ginsberg. "Those are the three booksellers I've had the most contact with, but I want to stress that so many independent booksellers have been incredibly supportive, especially in my region. I don't think I'd be anywhere without them. That's why the bookseller is the hero; she's the only one that doesn't get poked fun at.

"The whole book is an homage to independent booksellers. If Blind Submission ends up doing well, it will have a lot to do with them. That's why I decided to dedicate the book to readers and writers. If I could have dedicated it to every independent bookseller that's helped me, it would have been a very long list." --Karen Schechner