Undo by Joe Hutsko (first ebook reader .txt) 📕

Electronic books, or e-texts, have been available for some time now so this is hardly groundbreaking news. Or is it? For me, it’s a pretty big deal. Primarily because the electronic books that are available to download from the Internet, the World Wide Web, and online services such as CompuServe and America Online, were published previously in hardback or paperback editions, or both. Bruce Sterling’s “The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier,” for example, was first published in hardback by Bantam in 1992, then in 1993 in paperback, also by Bantam. Sterling wisely retained the electronic rights to his book so that he may - electronically speaking - do as he pleases with his work. To the best of my knowledge, Sterling is the first author to give away his published, in-print book for free on the Net.

I don’t know how many people who download e-books actually read them from cover-to-cover, though I suspect the number is rather low. Mainly because the medium isn’t as easy on the eyes as traditional paper-based books. I would bet that most people who download e-books - and I’m talking about novels, vs. reference works - browse them part of the way, then delete them from their computer or PDA. As for works of non-fiction, such as Sterling’s book, or the enormously serviceable “Elements of Style” (which has recently appeared in e-book format), readers refer to these works on a need-to-know basis. But novels, they’re another story. A novel is something you curl up with and, if it’s a good one, lose yourself in, much the way Alice found herself getting lost in that fantastic looking glass. Perhaps the valuable thing about publishing a novel as an e-text is that it gives readers a taste for the story and for the author’s style, so that the reader can then go out and purchase the published edition if they want to.

But let’s get back to “Undo,” and why making it available for free in this electronic book version is so important to me. The reason is simple: I want people to read it, and this is - so far, anyway - the only way to make that happen. For, despite the hard-fought efforts of not one, not two, but three very reputable literary agents, the book, unlike Mr. Sterling’s works, has not found a trade publisher it can call home.

Why? The answer to this question is best summed up by Bantam editor Brian Tart, in his recent letter of rejection:

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Ms. Juliet Nicolson Juliet Nicolson Ltd. Literary Agency 71 Chester Row London England SW1W 8JL

Dear Juliet:

Thank you for dropping off Joe Hutsko’s ms. while you were in New York. I must say that I am impressed with Mr. Hutsko’s writing and believe him to be a talent to watch in the future. His story, however, seemed to me to be a bit stale - it seems to be about six or eight years too late in the making - as I could see, and indeed have seen, this kind of corporate intrigue take place in the world of non-fiction. Because the plot was not as timely as it would need to be to succeed in the commercial marketplace, I will have to pass.

Please do keep me informed of Mr. Hutsko’s projects, should he decide to embark upon writing another ms.

Sincerely, [Signed] Brian Tart Associate Editor

Enc.

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Give or take a few sentiments, the gist of Mr. Tart’s encouraging but ultimately downer letter was repeated by all of the top trade publishing houses. A number of enthusiastic editors - in particular a young editor named John Michel, who pleaded with his senior editors to acquire the novel first at HarperCollins, then later when he moved to Crown (and who has since become a friend, so something good has survived those battles) - tried their best to acquire the book, and in one case an offer was extended to my then-agent, but then two days later the publisher backed out, apologizing that the editor who’d made the offer was in no position to do so, please forgive the error in our ways.

The really troubling thing for me was that when I set out to write my novel, another novel called “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” by Tom Wolfe, had taken the reading population by storm. Was not Mr. Wolfe’s novel inspired by real-life, by the bond trading schemes that at the time were making front page news? Readers of fiction turned the book into a best-seller, and as one of those readers, I cannot say that I would have read the book were Tom Wolfe to have written it as a non-fiction title. That it was inspired by actual characters and events, and turned by Wolfe’s expert hands into a compelling modern-day tale of murder and mortality, were enough to convince me that I could pull off the same sort of magic with my own “what if” scenario, swapping Silicon Valley for New York, and the personal computer business for bond trading.

That this was my first attempt at writing a novel goes a long way toward explaining the earliest rejections of the work, then titled “Silicon Dreams,” by editors unlucky enough to have had it land with a thud on their desks. Somehow I’d lost sight of Mr. Wolfe’s excellent illustration and found myself mimicking, all at once, the likes of Sidney Sheldon, Arthur Hailey, Jackie Collins, and, believe it or not, Stephen King (who happens to be my favorite mainstream read). With so many influences at play in the already befuddled head of an aspiring young writer with dreams of hitting the number one spot on all of the best-seller lists, you (and of course I, this much later) can understand how my storytelling ability left something to be desired.

Still, I pressed on, heeding suggestions I believed were valid (such as: “How dare you kill that character in the middle of the book just because you don’t know what to do with her next!”). More than once I put the whole thing on the shelf to give it, and myself, a breather; to put a little space between us so that our respective flaws could be considered the next time around with a clearer, colder eye. Four rewrites later, including a no-holds-barred excising, I finally had a book, still known then as “Silicon Dreams,” that I believed was as good as it was going to get.

And then it happened. A publisher bought it. I had the literary critic Digby Diehl to thank for this good news. At the time Digby was a book reviewer for “Playboy,” and also a daily book columnist for the Prodigy online service (where I’d done a brief stint ghost writing for a highly paid high-tech analyst who will remain unnamed). Via e-mail I asked Digby if he’d read my novel and, if he liked it, to suggest editors who may want to take a look at it. Well, Digby’d read it and liked it - enough to personally pass it along to the head of a new and small-but-going-for-the-big-time publisher named Knightsbridge Publishing, an imprint distributed by the reputable Hearst Corporation. Knightsbridge was founded around the time of the Gulf War, and made its killing, so to speak, with a mass market paperback best-seller, “The Rape of Kuwait.”

The deal was for both hardback and paperback rights, and the publisher himself called me to offer $5000 for the whole package, which I came close to accepting. However, I knew that money matters were best handled by my agent - despite the fact that I had fired her a few months earlier for not having sold the novel herself. Fortunately she forgave me my actions and signed me back up, compelling Knightsbridge to increase its offer to $25,000.

Too bad neither of us ever saw most of that money. Unfortunately, Knightsbridge went out of business - but not without first boosting my expectations through the exhilarating prepublication process. I was assigned a marvelous editor named Lynette Padwa, whose keen suggestions helped me to make the book a better read. There was even a glossy lavender and gold embossed book jacket with my photo on back atop Digby Diehl’s encouraging blurb, and two months before the publication date I received my first bound galley copy, to double-check for typesetting errors before it went off to the printer. The prepublication buzz started up, and a Hollywood producer named Andrew Karsch, who’d just released “The Prince of Tides” with Barbra Streisand, was considering buying a film option on the novel to adapt for a possible a feature film or television miniseries. And just when things couldn’t possibly look brighter, they did, when both Kirkus Review and Publishers Weekly asked to see advance reader’s copies of the book.

And then the impossible dream turned into a nightmare. I should have known the end was near when instead of receiving the signing advance in one lump sum, as agreed upon, it was coming in smaller and smaller portions (and then only after my hounding the accounting department every day telling them my rent and phone bill were late). You see, I wanted to believe. It was difficult enough to accept that this was finally happening to me - that my first novel was about to be published in hardback to building fanfare. To think otherwise, that something might stop the novel from being published, wasn’t a “happy thought,” and anything but happy thoughts, my agent advised, would seep disagreeably into the novel’s successful launch. But unhappy did things turn when Knightsbridge announced that it was closing shop.

But I was not to be put off. Armed with ten bound galleys, my agent appealed to several hardback publishers…and when they all said no - in almost every case for the same reasons Brian Tart at Bantam gave us - we tried paperback publishers, lowering our expectations and hoping then for a paperback original deal. Twice we came close. First Ace, then Berkley, however editors at both houses met resistance from editorial boards who felt that the novel would find no audience.

Feeling dejected and down on my luck, I had to blame someone for this conspiracy, so once again I contacted my agent and told her I would be seeking representation elsewhere. This time she told me she wouldn’t take me back if I changed my mind, and who could blame her. My next agent, who’d left an old and very successful New York literary agency to start her own agency, was young and fresh and building a name for herself as one to watch in the business, with editors chasing her all over the floor at the first American Booksellers Association conference she attended on her own. She had a more focused approach: Talk up the book to a few editors she knew very well and try to get something of a rivalry going for it - before any of them even read it. Brilliant thinking; this was the kind of agent I wanted on my side. Shooting for freshness, we decided to change the novel’s title from “Silicon Dreams” to “Double Click,” and off it went to the waiting editors. The long and short of it: Neither Random House nor Viking wanted it. Adding insult to injury, one even suggested that if I were to write a non-fiction book he would publish that. What a depressing thought.

Before she’d signed me up, my agent and I had