Jim Donovan knows books. A well-regarded author and historian, he’s a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and president and the owner of Jim Donovan Literary. He’s been an agent for more than two decades, during which time he’s sold hundreds of books to major publishers and other good houses. Some of these have been New York Times bestsellers; many have been optioned for film. Donovan has worked on the other side of the transaction as well: he’s served as editor, buyer for a bookstore chain, and bookstore staffer. He offers his insights, via email, into the world of writing and publishing, as well as into his own best-selling books.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: You’ve been a literary agent, author, book buyer, bookseller. But how did you get into the world of books? Where did you grow up, and how did your raising influence your life choices?

JIM DONOVAN: I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and my mother used to read to us four kids every night from her three-ring binder of favorite poems she had copied out by hand while growing up in New Hampshire in the ’30s and ’40s. That and other children’s books—most memorably, Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses—whetted my taste for the written word.

One day when I was in the fourth grade, I stayed home from school sick. My mother walked about a mile to a bookstore and came back with a hardback called Tarzan of the Apes. I had never read an adult novel before, but I read this one in about two days, and there was no looking back. In less than a year I read most of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ adventures—his Mars books are still my favorite SF series, ever (and the movie John Carter of Mars is much better than its reputation, by the way). I soon decided that I’d read every Newberry Award winner, and did read most of them. I also went through the usual list of boys’ book series, such as Tom Swift, Rick Brant, and the Hardy Boys—in fifth grade I started a Hardy Boys Library in my class, and lent out my copies. In high school, I was the nerd with the locker full of books—not textbooks, but paperback novels to loan to other students. I read nothing but SF and fantasy for a few years—I even wrote an entire novel, a Burroughs pastiche titled “Swords beyond the Stars” for a tenth-grade writing assignment, which only needed to be a story; I got an A, but I think that grade was based on size, not quality. Then I dived into the books of John Steinbeck (an underrated storyteller, even if he lacks the striking style of Hemingway or Faulkner). That led me to other literary writers.

I’m also a movie lover, and after a couple years of junior college I moved to Austin. After a year to gain residency, I began attending the University of Texas—I think the tuition for my first full-time semester was less than $500. It was a coin flip as to whether I’d major in writing or film. I decided on film, and over the next two years, while working at Barton Springs Pool, saw lots of great movies and wrote about them. (This was before personal computers, and I couldn’t type, so I would take my handwritten paper to a typing service.) I also finished a screenplay or two. I never used my film degree, but I like to think I learned something about telling a story from watching and studying all those films.

I saved some money and after graduating, I went to Europe—Spain, first, with the idea of becoming an expatriate writer like Hemingway. I never bought the motorcycle I planned to, and never ran with the bulls in Pamplona, but I had a great time living in Barcelona, where I worked as a deejay in a bar at night while I made trips up and down the coast during the day. But I wrote almost nothing, and one day I realized I missed peanut butter and good hamburgers and Mexican food. I got on a plane a few days later and returned to Austin.

I had no money and needed a job, and when I saw a bookstore clerk job listed in the classified section of the Austin American-Statesman, I thought I’d apply. I got the job, and worked at Congress Avenue Booksellers for manager Lesley Bonazzi, a wonderful person and knowledgeable bookwoman, for four years, getting to know the retail book industry in the trenches, so to speak. Then it was on to Dallas to be a book buyer for Taylors Books, a local chain, for a few years. After that, I was an editor at Taylor Publishing (no relation to the bookstores) and eventually the senior editor there. But I soon yearned to be involved in more subject areas than the few Taylor published in, and I decided to hang out my own shingle as a literary agent in 1993.

I loved The Blood of Heroes. I particularly liked learning new tidbits, such as the fact that William Barret Travis, at twenty-six, had already written his own autobiography. It seems if there was a topic in Texas that had been researched exhaustively, it would be the Alamo, but when your book was published in 2012, history buffs lauded it for its new findings. For our readers not familiar with the book, will you tell us about it; and how long did it take you to research and write it?

It took me two years of full-time research and another year and a half to write The Blood of Heroes, which is about the Battle of the Alamo (about the same as for my previous book, A Terrible Glory, about Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn).

I like to put the events I’m writing about in context, and fully explain the world and time each one happens in, and how things got to the point of the battle, because I think that makes for a richer book and a more meaningful reading experience. And after researching two topics that have been written to death, I’ve learned that if someone digs deep enough and long enough, they’ll find something new. Most writers of history don’t—they’re content to use obvious primary sources and secondary sources such as books and articles by others. They don’t do archival research, which takes time and effort and is consistently disappointing, since nine out of ten places you look, you won’t find anything new. But after you’ve read all the secondary sources, and start delving into the primary sources, you’ll find new material that hasn’t been seen or used by anyone in a long, long time—and more important, after reading all those other books and articles, and becoming intimately familiar with the subject and all the characters involved, you’ll know it when you see it. Even an event as old as the Battle of the Alamo, which had occurred about 175 years previous to when I first began researching it, yielded fresh information. And that’s the best part of the process—researching the subject, especially when it takes you to archives with old letters, newspapers, government records, military reports, family histories, etc. For me, it’s as close to a time machine as you can get.

How has the world of Texas letters changed since you entered the publishing business?

A full answer would entail a book itself because much of it would mirror what’s happening in the book business nationally and worldwide. One unfortunate development is the disappearance of the Texas book publisher. Until about 2000, there were dozens of small and mid-sized houses, anywhere from one-person operations to publishers such as Taylor, in Dallas, which were competitive in some areas with the best New York houses—and could turn a profit, or at least break even. So writers don’t have anywhere near the number of publishing options now, outside of university presses, which are a different animal altogether.

Of course, the eBook has made everyone a potential publisher, though the trick is figuring out how to get enough people to know about your book when you’re one of 5 million eBooks available online. Traditional publishers will always be around, I think, because of several advantages: knowledgeable marketing and PR departments, and most important, good editors. The value and necessity of editing in the book publishing process is tragically underrated, in my opinion—both in the area of acquisitions, and actual editing, including structural editing, copyediting, and proofreading. Those last three skills are the difference between a great book and an unreadable one, and the difference often isn’t as large as you might think.

Your previous two books are about Custer—another figure who fascinates those of us who live in the West. What attracts you to history? And would you tell us about your work on Custer?

I had written a couple of other smaller books previously, including a coffee-table book on Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Coffee-table books don’t usually involve extensive research or eye-opening findings, but I read enough on the subject to realize that so much new information on the battle had been made known through the great work of others in two areas—1) archaeological findings in and around the battlefield, and the accompanying forensic work, and 2) the Indian testimony, which for more than a hundred years had been dismissed as frustratingly irreconcilable and difficult to make much sense of. It came to me that someone needed to incorporate all this new knowledge into an exciting narrative of the battle. I spent six months working on a proposal, then asked an agent friend I respected to represent me, and we sold it to Little, Brown in an auction. Knopf made the first offer, and for a short while I had Borzoi dogs running through my head, which I didn’t mind at all, Knopf being what it was and still is. But Little, Brown did a fantastic job of selling A Terrible Glory, and it reached #19 on the New York Times bestseller list. It still sells well.

I don’t know why, exactly, I’ve done two books of history set in the nineteenth-century American West. Growing up, I had no special interest in history—I think many history lovers develop a passion for it later in life. I know I did. Actually, I know why I did the Alamo book: everyone thought it was a natural follow-up to the Little Bighorn, for obvious reasons, and of course I live in Texas, so I thought the research travel would be easier.

You founded Jim Donovan Literary Agency in 1993 and have sold hundreds of books for dozens of writers. Many have been optioned for movies. But there must have been a “big book” or a big break that made you realize the venture would be a success. Can you share that with us?

The first really successful book I sold as an agent was a biography of the great golfer Ben Hogan, who was from Fort Worth. It didn’t start out that way, though. I had learned some of his story while I was an editor at Taylor Publishing, where I worked on an autobiography of Hogan’s friend Byron Nelson—his wife, Peggy, did a fantastic job of channeling his voice in the writing. Nelson and Hogan had actually worked as caddies together at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth. When I went out on my own as an agent, I suggested to an excellent writer named Curt Sampson, who was looking for a subject for a book, that he should take on Ben Hogan. He wrote a great proposal, but no one in New York was interested—they just didn’t see the attraction, even though Hogan’s story seemed to me to be very dramatic, and to have all the elements of a great sports story. The off-the-field story has to be just as interesting as the actual contests. A small Southern publisher, Rutledge Hill, took it on, and offered a modest advance. Curt wrote a great book, Hogan, and it sold a ton of copies. It was on the basis of that success that I sold his next book to a New York house for a much larger advance. That’s when I knew I was doing something right.

What’s a day in the life of a literary agent like? How many queries do you get in a day? How many agents are there at your first?

Hours spent on answering emails, of course. There’s almost always a fire that needs to be put out immediately, such as a bad cover that requires a persuasive email to change it, or jacket or catalog copy that needs improving, or a due date that hasn’t been met that needs massaging, or any number of other problems or complications that arise. There are also contract negotiations—recently it took five rounds of back-and-forths to achieve a contract the author and I could live with. And with my acquisitions editor Melissa Shultz—an author herself, of the recent From Mom to Me Again, and a fantastic editor—there’s always a fiction manuscript to edit, or a nonfiction proposal to polish until it can’t be made any better. And when a novel or a proposal is ready to be sent out, we spend a lot of time curating our list of editors, because one of the most valuable things a good agent does is get a writer’s book in the hands of the right editors at the right publishers. Each editor has different interests and tastes, and each house handles different types of books. Sending to the wrong editor or publisher is a waste of everyone’s time.

What’s been the best change to come to publishing since you started?

Email is probably the best, since it’s instantaneous. I’m much better when I have time to compose what I want to say. Email’s also the worst change—the number of unnecessary or pointless emails I get is unbelievable.

What’s the one piece of advice you'd like to give to aspiring writers?

Read the kinds of books you like to write, and read them as a writer. Notice how an author you admire handles a certain element of writing, such as dialogue, character, setting, pacing, etc.—in other words, just read a chapter or two or three just paying attention to that element. For a novel, finish it and put it away for a while—a few weeks, at least. That way you can gain some objectivity because now you’re going to have to do the really tough but absolutely necessary part of the process—revising your book. That means “killing your darlings”—deleting lots of your words, all those unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, to start with. Buy a book or two on self-editing—there are several out there—and study them as if you were going to be tested on them. Then get back into it and make it better. If you don’t do that, you weren’t cut out to be a writer because it’s absolutely important if you want to get published by a quality house. For nonfiction, unless you’re a celebrity, it really helps to get published in short form in your area of expertise. Publishers are understandably reluctant to take a chance and spend tens of thousands of dollars, minimum, on someone who’s never been published in a reputable venue—by that, I mean a magazine or journal with standards of editorial acceptance, meaning they don’t publish anything and everything submitted to them.

Are you working on another book? What's next for Jim Donovan?

I’m currently in the middle of a book on the Apollo 11 moon landing. I decided to take a break from the nineteenth century. I’ve been telling people for years that I wanted to do a book where some of the people involved in the story are still alive so I could talk to them. I’ve found that’s a mixed blessing. Now I’ve got to get it really right or it’ll be, “You’ve got it wrong. I know, because I was there.” The fear of that happening keeps me awake at night, which I suppose bodes well for the accuracy of what I write. I hope so.

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