Setting the Record Straight

I try to write the kind of book that I like to read: one that tells good stories and asks big questions. Or, to put it in loftier terms, I try to write a book with literary merit and that makes a contribution to the scholarly literature. For the first, I try to write a well-paced narrative that brings my characters to life. For the second, I try to offer a fresh interpretation of the history surrounding my main subject.

As a writer, these twin goals pose a problem: How to set the record straight without bogging down the story?

The answer is simple (even if the execution is not): Keep the reader in mind at all times. When correcting mistaken notions about my main subject, I do so mostly by simply giving my version, and leave the arguing to the endnotes. Don't weigh down the narrative with pedantry! But sometimes there are misapprehensions that shape our understanding of the central figure—stories so iconic that they must be addressed explicitly. 

With Commodore Vanderbilt, this came up a number of times. One of them involved his relationship with Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin. Their friendship has been blown wildly out of proportion; most writers accept without question the idea that Vanderbilt wanted to marry Claflin and funded their brokerage house, purportedly the first woman-run brokerage on Wall Street. When I shot down such notions, I had to do so directly. In special cases like this, I think a discussion of the evidence actually serves the reader, for such tales go to the heart of the public's notion of Vanderbilt. In most instances, however, it's best to let the correct version flow without any fanfare.

Then there's the matter of correcting the historical record when it comes to larger issues. When I put my subjects in context, I try to avoid taking for granted the standard version of that context. I try to ask hard questions about American history, as illuminated by my main character. In Jesse James, I tackled the historiography surrounding Missouri's internal divisions in the Civil War and Reconstruction. In The First Tycoon, I offered a new interpretation (well, not entirely new, but with my own twist) of the antebellum Democratic and Whig parties, particularly with regard to their positions on the economy. I argue, for example, that Jacksonian Democrats favored the market economy, but were disturbed by the abstract nature of corporations, paper money, and securities. I also identify a deep suspicion of competition among many Whigs, which helps explain the origins of the "robber baron" label, first applied to Vanderbilt.

Again, there are key moments when it is worth interrupting the story to examine these questions. But such discussions must contribute to the story. It's my job to convince the reader that she or he needs to grasp what I'm explaining in order to follow what happens next.

And that is the ultimate law that a writer should follow at all times: Give the reader a reason to turn the page. Always.

Live at the New York Public Library

No, my conversation with novelist Kevin Baker was not part of the Live at the NYPL series, but it was live, and it was at the New York Public Library. It's airing on CSPAN's BookTV (see previous post), but now you can watch it online. Just click here.

On BookTV This Week

My April 30 event at the New York Public Library, a conversation about The First Tycoon with novelist Kevin Baker, will be broadcast four times in the coming week on CSPAN's BookTV.

Monday, May 25, at 5:45 PM Eastern, 2:45 PM Pacific

Tuesday, May 26, at 5:45 AM Eastern, 2:45 AM Pacific

Saturday, May 30, at 2:00 PM Eastern, 11:00 AM Pacific

Monday, June 1, at 1:00 AM Eastern, 10:00 PM Pacific

The introductions are a bit long, but I think it moves along pretty well after that.

Reviews, Interviews

Before I post links to the most recent interviews with me and reviews of The First Tycoon, I should mention an issue that all writers face: the problem of condensing a book-length narrative into a few minutes of discussion. 

I never find it easy—and if it was easy, then a book-length work would not be necessary. So I try to accomplish a few things in the brief moments available in an interview. First, I try to orient listeners, to give them a quick overview of my subject's life. Second, I try to explain why my subject was, and is, important—to identify some of the significance of his life. Third, I try to touch on the various threads woven throughout my book, such as Vanderbilt's business career, his family life, and the changing social, economic, and cultural landscape of nineteenth-century America. Finally, I attempt to give a feel for the pace and shape of the narrative, to suggest something of the simple pleasure of following this dramatic, adventurous life. 

OK. Recent reviews and interviews:

Sunday's Washington Post review is here.

Allen Barra reviews the book for the website Truthdig.com, here.

I was interviewed for the Washington Post Book World podcast, which can be played by clicking here.

I was recently on NPR's On Point, for a full hour. The audio can be played by clicking the "listen to this show" button at the top of the page located here.

I was interviewed by Jeff Schechtman for Napa's KVON radio. You can find and play the interview on this page.

Leave it to the pros

Well, I'm back from my tour to promote the book. (Just have one more event coming up, at Book Passage at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.) And I've learned my lesson: Trust the professionals.

Relations between authors and publishers can be uncomfortable. A lot of authors complain about their presses, and sometimes with good reason. Publishers are cutting back in this grim economic environment, and age of declining book reading. Editors actually edit less and less.

On the other hand, it's extremely important for authors to know when the publisher actually knows what it's doing, and then to trust the professionals. I'm lucky: My books were picked up by Knopf, which has a deserved reputation for really fine publishing. I am not trying to brag—with so many deserving authors out there, I think I just got a lucky break. My editor did a splendid job in helping me shape the book (but leaving it firmly in my hands, so it's still my book). The page design is terrific, and it's beautifully produced. 

Authors often get worked up about the flap copy and cover design, but an outside perspective usually is best. After you've worked on a book for years, you can be a little too close to it to effectively present it in a couple of hundred words and a single visual image on the front. (I know this from my years writing flap copy for Oxford University Press.) 

I thought I was pretty smart about not stepping on the process. But I got a little too smart for my own good with this tour. After my very capable publicist had set up a schedule, I suggested adding an event in Mystic, Connecticut, where there's a historical seaport. Perfect, I thought, especially since nearby Stonington was crucial to Vanderbilt's rise. The publicist added an appearance in a Mystic bookstore.

So I flew to New York, and had a great crowd at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. I had a packed house the next night in Newport, Rhode Island, at the Breakers (the mansion built by the Commodore's grandson), where about 150 people came to hear me speak. Then came Mystic. Not one person showed up. 

Serves me right. There was a reason why this event was not dreamed up by the publicity department, which knows the nation's bookstores as no author can. I can see that I'm in the fortunate position of being published by real professionals. Next time, I'll keep my brilliant ideas to myself.

Hunt that Cliché

I'm in Mystic, Connecticut, for the last event on the road for my book-promotion tour. Even if no one shows up, it's been nice to visit coastal Connecticut, especially the village of Stonington, where Cornelius Vanderbilt took over his first railroad in 1847.

This business of promoting my book has distracted me from the main purpose of this particular blog: to discuss the ins and outs of writing biography. So here's a quick post on that subject.

One of the most important things that a writer should do is to hunt down and kill clichés. Show them no mercy. They are like roaches: they're always lurking, waiting to swarm the moment we turn out the lights—that is, the moment the writer loses focus. And, like roaches, they fill me with an intense sense of revulsion. 

I'm no genius for saying that clichés are terrible. Perhaps the most famous enemy of stock phrases was George Orwell, whose essay "Politics and the English Language" makes the case most effectively. As Orwell reminds us, we go wrong the moment we start to write in phrases, slapping in blocks of words rather than choosing each word deliberately. Do this too much, and soon the phrases are doing your thinking for you. And that's no good.

Clichés are everywhere. At a bookstore yesterday, I picked up a well-reviewed work of history, and read about the Senate "calling it a day." Ouch. Writers and thinkers who are otherwise enormously talented often fall into such formulations as "blowing his top," or "wore more than one hat," or "going down the wrong track." 

Clichés deaden writing. They evoke nothing; at best, they serve as a shorthand that saves the writer the trouble of precisely expression. And that, more than anything else, is what bothers me when I read them: they are a glaring sign of laziness. 

Of course, someone could probably pick up my books and find some clichés without much trouble. As I said, they're insidious, and it's damned hard to fumigate an entire book to kill them all off. But we have to try.

New York Times to Amazon: Wake Up

For my loyal reader, Brian, it comes as no news that I've been complaining about 1-star customer "reviews" at Amazon that aren't about the book, but are only about the Kindle price. Amazon has trained customers to think that $9.99 is the natural book for an e-book, even though it is taking a loss at this price in order to dominate the e-book market.

You've heard it from me before. But here's a great story on the subject in the New York Times.

By the way, Amazon has cut the Kindle price of my book to $9.99. Must be selling reasonably well.

That's all for now. I'm off to Rhode Island tomorrow, where I'll be speaking at the Breakers. For those hungry for yet more reviews of my book, check out the current issue of The New Yorker, in the Books in Brief section. Also a good review in the Dallas Morning News, by a former speechwriter for President Bush, of all people. And the Washington Post will review it next Sunday. I'm hoping to be interviewed on the podcast, which is cool, because I listen to it religiously. 

I promise to keep it short

This is a busy week—my last on the road to talk about my book, at least until the fall.

Here's where I'll be. If you come to hear me speak, I promise to keep it short. I prefer to respond to questions, rather than just lecturing.

Monday, May 18: NEW YORK 
Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 2289 Broadway (at 82nd Street), New York 
7:00 PM 

Tuesday, May 19: NEWPORT 
The Breakers, 44 Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. 
7:00 PM 
Note: This is a ticketed event, $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers. It will be an in-depth talk, illustrated with photographs and maps from the book, with time for questions. Registration begins March 16 at www.newportmansions.org or by phone at 401-847-1000 x154. 

Wednesday, May 20: MYSTIC 
Bank Square Books, 53 West Main Street, Mystic, Connecticut 
6:30 PM 

Thursday, May 21: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA 
Kepler's Bookstore, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA 
7:30 PM 

Wednesday, June 3: SAN FRANCISCO 
Book Passage Bookstore, Ferry Building, San Francisco 
6:00 PM

All that hard work for nothin'

The Washington Times is reviewing The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Unfortunately, it is the weirdest review I've ever seen. Take a look: It's here. (Actually this link takes you to my comment. But you can click on "article" for the review.)

OK: A friend of mine reminds me that this is the Washington Times. 'Nuff said. But boy, is it weird.

I have the sneaking suspicion that the reviewers (it was a team effort, apparently) didn't read my book, except to pull out a quote or two. The review actually contradicts my book at every point, presenting instead the untenable version of Vanderbilt to be found in a highly questionable biography published by someone else in 2007.

I won't go on—my comment, posted on the Washington Times review page, explains it all. But in a day when we're fighting to keep hard-pressed newspapers in the business of reviewing books, the few reviews that do appear should at least reflect an actual reading of the book in question. Even in a review in the Washington Times. 

Unfortunately, reviews by people who haven't read the book are all too common. I should count myself lucky that I've been largely spared this phenomenon. 

Also this week in San Francisco

As noted in my last post, I'll be giving a talk at the Mechanics' Institute Library in San Francisco tonight, Thursday, May 14, at 6:00 PM. It will focus mainly on Commodore Vanderbilt's role in the rise of San Francisco and the California gold rush, though I hope there will be some questions that take us into other areas of his life, including the personal side.

There's a website with details right here.

Then, on Saturday, May 16, I'll be on the radio program West Coast Live, nationally syndicated but broadcast locally from 10:00 AM to 12:00 noon on KALW-FM. If you want to attend, visit http://www.wcl.org for tickets. The show is conducted in front of a live audience at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

This Week in San Francisco

This Thursday at 6:00 PM I'll be speaking at the Mechanics' Institute library in San Francisco. I'll be discussing, naturally enough, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

But I'll be talking specifically about Vanderbilt's role in the rise of San Francisco, and San Francisco's importance to the financial dominance of New York. Places can be as important as characters in a book—or nearly so—and cities in particular I find very interesting. 

In some respects, my book is a love letter to the two cities I have called home. I weave into my biography the rise of New York from "an overgrown seaport village" (as it was called at the start of the nineteenth century) to a million-strong metropolis, and of San Francisco from a village to a major city. New York shaped Vanderbilt, and Vanderbilt shaped it. He never set foot in San Francisco, yet he proved crucial to its development. 

What's Wrong with the Kindle Price Complaints

ADDENDUM: APRIL 11, 2011
Now that Random House has joined the rest of the Big Six commercial publishers in using the agency model for pricing e-books, some of my comments about e-book pricing are completely out of date. Now publishers, not Amazon, set the retail price of e-books. The typical retail price of e-books has gone up, but not by as much as I firmly believe it eventually will, once e-books represent the majority of the market for a typical title.

But many of my comments remain valid: Amazon used the loss-leader price of $9.99 to create monopoly-style market share (for a while), not because it was some kind of natural price. Reviews about prices are irrelevant and harmful. And the value of a book is not in its paper, but in its content, so complaints about e-books being "outrageously overpriced" at $12.99—though downloadable software, for example, sometimes retails at $40 or $150 a title—is just nonsense. Same content for basically half the price of a hardcover? If that's your idea of a rip-off, maybe you should read more.
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No one is touchier or more insecure than a newly published author. I reminded myself of that when I first checked for customer reviews on Amazon.com. Some people will hate your book, so just accept it, I told myself. Some people will hate the length, or your style, and there's nothing you can do about that.

What I didn't expect was a succession of 1-star "reviews" by people who refuse to read the book itself. They give the book 1 star simply because the Kindle version is, in their view, too expensive. It's "outrageous," they complain, to have to pay more than $9.99 for an e-book. "Greedy publishers" are blamed.

I think it's outrageous that a customer should be allowed to rate a product that he or she actually refuses to know anything about. This actually violates Amazon's own policy on customer reviews, which prohibits reviews of the price.

Since Amazon has chosen to allow its policy to be violated in the case of my book, I feel a need to address the substance of these complaints. The factual case against $9.99 e-book pricing needs to be made. Here's my counterblast:

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Frankly, I think that it is wrong to post a review that aims to damage sales of a book that the reviewer actually refuses to know anything about. It hurts other consumers: they can see the price; what they don't know is if it's any good or not. And it hurts me for circumstances totally out of my control.

However, Amazon informs me that these "reviews" fit their guidelines, so I am speaking up. Please consider the following points before you make my book the target of a campaign over Kindle pricing.

First, I welcome all reviews of the book itself. Did you read it and hate it? OK, type away.

But you are misplacing your wrath if you are making me the target of a campaign over Kindle pricing. I am not getting rich off of writing. The opposite, in fact. Nor do I have any influence over pricing. I am not an AIG executive, polishing his gold watch on a pile of taxpayer money. And the "greedy publishers" denounced in the 1-star reviews lose money on at least 70% of the books they publish. They're in trouble.

Perhaps most important, the complaints of Kindle books being too expensive are factually wrong. Trust me, I would love to price my book at $9.99. But then, why not $1.99? Why not free? Because the price must allow everyone involved, from me to my publisher to Amazon, to stay in business.

Can a book like mine be published profitably at $9.99? No way. This is because of two problems: First, most of the costs of producing a book is NOT in printing and distribution. Second, the fixed costs (unrelated to physical production and distribution) must be recovered by being spread out among the units sold. So if you are going to slash the price, the number of units sold must go up. If you slash the list price from $37.50 for a hardover to $9.99 for an e-book, you are going to have to sell vastly larger numbers in e-book form. That's more than unlikely--it's well-nigh impossible.

Let's break it down. Most of the cost of producing a book are located in the author's royalties, editing, copy-editing, design, photo rights and reproduction, marketing, and publisher overhead. They remain the same, e-book or printed book. In our era of highly efficient, globalized production and just-in-time inventory, printing and distribution constitute a small part of the cost of producing a book. In my book, I devoted almost seven years to research and writing (and nearly went bankrupt doing it). It underwent extensive, top-of-the-field editing. Plus copy-editing and proofreading. Great expense went into acquiring and reproducing the 79 illustrations, not to mention the half-dozen original maps. It is comprehensively indexed, and (I think) beautifully designed. In other words, it's not the page count that makes this book much more expensive than a 250-page paperback thriller. (No offense to thriller writers and readers.)

So, not all books are alike. In fact, they vary dramatically, in terms of cost and effort, apart from printing. Why should they all be priced the same? Even before moving on, the idea that all e-books should be $9.99 clearly doesn't make sense. But it makes less sense the farther you go down the rabbit hole of publishing.

So: the next key factor in determining the price of a book is an estimate of the numbers that will sell. The publisher sets the price to distribute the fixed costs across the estimated number of units, so that both publisher and retailer can make a profit. That calculation, not printing and distribution costs, explain why two hardcovers with similar page counts can be priced very differently, one at $20 and one at $40. It's not the price of paper that explains it. It's distribution of fixed costs across the estimated number of units to be sold.

But, you will say, copying and distributing a digital file is almost free. True, but the publisher must still recoup the investment. Therefore, if we are to slash the list price from $37.50 to $9.99, those fixed costs would have to be distributed among hundreds of thousands more units. For an e-book to be that cheap, it would have to sell vastly larger numbers than it would in hardcover. With a big biography like this, there's no one in the publishing industry who believes that the market will multiply many times if only it's in e-book form. We're not talking Harry Potter here. We're talking about a big, serious biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. (I think it's fun to read, but I don't kid myself that I'll ever be in Da Vinci Code sales territory.)

Studies and market research show that book reading in this country is in decline, or at least flat. Can anyone with a straight face say that a book that will sell, say, 50,000 copies in hardcover will suddenly sell 500,000 in the Kindle edition, if only it is priced at $9.99? (I have no idea what my sales are or will be, by the way, so I'm plucking a figure out of the air.)

Can anyone seriously say that there are 450,000 people out there who will rush out and buy a Kindle reader (which isn't cheap) so they can read my 600-page book (not counting endnotes, photos, maps, and index), if only the Kindle price is cut to $9.99? The idea is ludicrous. And, frankly, I don't believe that 500,000 e-book sales would still allow for a profit at $9.99.

So why is your mammoth online retailer pricing so many Kindle books at $9.99? It is taking a loss to create a market for the Kindle. It is creating the misleading impression that e-books are ever so cheap to write, edit, design, proofread, etc., etc., etc. Take it from a biographer of a robber baron: This is a classic strategy. It will lead eventually either to a drop in the production of books (couldn't produce mine and sell it at $9.99), or eventually prices will jump up again, when the market is sufficiently dominated by one retailer.

Please, read my book and, if you wish, give it a scathing review. And, if you don't buy my argument, write to publishers (they have websites now) and complain. Complain to Amazon. But if you don't like the price, just don't buy it. That, not driving down the customer rating, is a real boycott. Trust your fellow consumers to decide if they can afford it.

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Addendum:

Amazon has since reduced the Kindle price of my book to $9.99. Yet it is leaving up 1-star "reviews" of my book that complain that the Kindle price is above $9.99! But now there are plenty of 4- and 5-star reviews to balance them out. In fact, some of the 5-star reviews complain about the irrelevant 1-star reviews, and a couple of the initial 1-star reviewers changed theirs to 5 stars after reading the book. I guess it goes to prove a point I make above: trust the consumer. And it goes to prove a point I make in a later post: don't get worked up over bad reviews. I should take my own advice.

In Sunday's New York Times

The Sunday (May 10) New York Times Book Review features a review of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. You can go to it by clicking here.

I'm very happy. It's tough enough getting reviewed at all in this age of ever-shrinking review space in newspapers, let alone getting a positive review. And the reviewer gives me credit for balancing storytelling with historical analysis, which is what I hope to do, and I think all good biographers should strive for.

The book's also mentioned in an article in the Sunday Times about good books on New York. You can find it by clicking here. Comes at the end of the article.

Also great to see. In some respects, my book about Vanderbilt is a love letter to the two great cities that I've called home, New York and San Francisco. Needless to say, the rise of New York is a major theme of the book.

"Truer than History"

"We cannot understand each other, except in a rough and ready way," E.M. Forster wrote in Aspects of the Novel. "But in a novel we can know people perfectly. . . . In this direction fiction is truer than history, because it goes beyond the evidence, and each of us knows from his experience that there is something beyond the evidence."

Forster's words should resonate with the biographer. As nonfiction writers—a brand of historians—we are restricted to the evidence; yet we know, as Forster did, that our subjects had inner lives. Like Ahab, we must always strive to capture the uncapturable, the unspoken reality that always lies beneath the surface. But if we go overboard in this pursuit, we can end up like Ahab himself, dragged down by what we're hunting.

I bring up Forster because his words speak to the proper relationship between biography and fiction, a subject I previously promised to address. Fiction—whether contemporary to the era we're writing about ourselves or historical fiction written much later—should not be used as a factual guide. True, it can provide some useful quotes to evoke a place and time; but there's something else that we can take from it.

When I had a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, one of my classmates was novelist Nathan Englander. He said something that made a lasting impression on me: the necessity of creating a fully realized world. This is true for the nonfiction writer as well as the novelist. But the novelist can go deeper than the biographer, integrating the inner and outer lives of his characters. As biographers, we can't do the exact same thing, but we can pick up the spirit of it. The setting and personalities, the environment and agendas, all should seem part of an organic whole.

That's why, despite all the nonfiction reading I have to do for my research, I'm always reading fiction. I need to to nurture my writer's brain.

Long, yes. But nimble.

I'm on a much-needed break in my tour to talk about The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. It's a good moment to address an issue in biography-writing that I faced with this book.

There's one word that has appeared in almost every review: "long." Well, I can't argue. It is long, without question. Vanderbilt led an extraordinarily long and eventful life, and certainly deserved an epic biography.

The question a reader naturally asks, with a book this substantial, is, Will I get bogged down in it? I hope the answer is a resounding no. I consciously took a few steps to make it as nimble as possible.

First, I learned something from perhaps my favorite writer of all: Tolstoy. No, I can't write like Tolstoy, but I noticed something about his two epic novels: He broke them into little chapters, often only a page or two long. That meant that you always have a natural stopping point just ahead. There is no sense of being lost in a sea of pages. My chapters are much longer, but I introduced breaks every few pages, to offer the same sort of relief to a hard-pressed reader. With a book like this, you need to be able to pick it up, put it down, and pick it up again later. I tried to make it easier.

The other thing I tried to do was to keep the narrative moving. One of my favorite definitions of plot is the creation of expectations, followed by their fulfillment. The fulfillment might not be what you think it will be, but you know there's resolution coming. The point is, as a writer I try to give the reader a reason to read the next page, and the next chapter. I try to create a sense that something is going to happen, that something will be revealed, that events are moving toward a climax (or, in my book, a succession of every growing climaxes).

I tried to end each chapter by opening a door to the next. Generally speaking, most chapters in my book are defined by a business conflict, which usually comes to some kind of resolution (or pause) by the end of the chapter. But there was always something looming over the horizon for Vanderbilt, and I tried to get the reader interested in discovering what was coming next.

Home, then More Blogging

Many, many thanks to the people who came to hear me speak at

• the Albany Institute of History and Art

• the New York Public Library

• the Cambridge Forum

• Politics & Prose

• the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

A little later in May I am going to be speaking in the Bay Area, as well as in New York, the Breakers in Newport, and Mystic seaport in Connecticut. You can find my schedule on my website. But for now I'm heading home at last to see my wife and son, whom I miss more than I can say.

Once I get some sleep, I'll be posting on biography-writing once more. Next up: biography and historical fiction.

Next Stop: Albany

Sunday, May 2, 2:00 PM:

I'll be speaking at the Albany Institute of History and Art, 125 Washington Avenue, Albany, New York. It will be a formal talk, illustrated with images from my book, about Commodore Vanderbilt's battle for Albany in 1866–67. It was an epic business battle that tells us a great deal about Vanderbilt, his business methods, the changing nature of the American economy, and the importance of Albany as a critical hub in the emerging national transportation network.

The photograph shows Vanderbilt, seated with top-hat and crossed legs in right foreground, on the veranda of the Congress Hall hotel in Saratoga Springs in the 1870s.

Next Stop: Albany

I'm in New York for a couple of days, my old home town, before I go to Albany to speak on Sunday, May 3, at 2:00 PM, at the Albany Institute of History and Art. I did some important research on my book there. 

My thanks, by the way, to the Museum of American Finance and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the New York Public Library, for the wonderful event I had last night with Kevin Baker.

In the meantime, my interview with WNYC's great Leonard Lopate is already available online:

click here to listen.